Ester Partegàs

Born 1972 in Barcelona, Spain, Ester Partegàs lives and works in Brooklyn, USA. One of the topics Catalan artist Ester Partegàs has been addressing in her latest work is the tension between consumption and excess, and the ever-hardening climate of surveillance and control, which has taken grip of public and private spaces. Her work is formally located in the pop tradition, yet ideologically it is shaped by a critical dimension. Her most recent series of works consists of collage-like manipulated photographs and is called We the People. The black-and-white photographs show street scenes in New York with people pushing into one another while holding on to their shopping bags. Partegàs has used bright spray paint to blot out the people’s heads. It is a device that strengthens the anonymous side of the urban scenery by obscuring identities.

The link to the entrepreneurial values of Credit Suisse (2008 exhibition) lies in the consumerist mood of the work, oscillating between excitement and critique. As Ester Partegàs’ art takes on the realm of human interactions and its social context, the value she is most preoccupied with is Social Responsibility. One of the questions which absorbs her work is "how can art in our Western consumerist environment contribute to the emergence of a rational society?" It is typical for Partegàs’ objects to have a subtle power of provocation, which plays on social processes and conventions. The urban city model is spreading over the world, and space is getting cramped and expensive. To question the conditions of interhuman relationships and economic exchange is essential for both artists and economic leaders. Ester Partegàs will develop a new piece for Art & Entrepreneurship.

Her works were showcased in 2007 among others at the 2nd Moscow Biennial, the Reina Sofia in Madrid and in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid.

Website: www.esterpartegas.com

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