Ester Partegàs is interested in examining the minute, overlooked aspects of prevalent themes in contemporary life. As the adage goes, the devil is in the details, and Partegàs scrutinizes broad issues of place/space, consumerism, and isolation with her replicas of portable headphones, newspapers, candy bars, and airplane pillows in her sculpture, Homeless (1999), at Dikeou Collection. She dissects these details and replications even further in Detours, a series of drawings she began in 2001 that mimic cashier receipts, one of which she created as a poster for zingmagazine issue 17. When viewers encounter Homeless and Detours, they are presented with objects that are common and uninteresting yet embedded with compelling insight that begs for a closer look at the things we deem unimportant yet engage with on a daily basis.

Homeless is a replica of an airplane chair constructed out of wood and styrofoam, accessorized with wares that only serve temporary functions before being discarded. The chair and its accoutrements represent the living environment of the contemporary nomad and their entrapment in consumer culture. Who is this contemporary nomad? Judging by the bags from Helmut Lang and Kate Spade, the laptop, and the copy of The New York Times, this is a nomad who likely travels for business. The ubiquitous name brands and the need to stay informed and connected via the internet and newspaper are what ground this traveler with some sense of familiarity as the scenery and the people change. The chair itself is a grounding mechanism as well, serving as the place where one eats, sleeps, works, and maybe squeezes in some entertainment and socializing. These objects provide familiarity and functionality, but not comfort, which is a feeling most naturally achieved in a home environment.

When one is outside of the home and in the public realm, it is to be expected that everything a person needs will have to be purchased. Gasoline, parking, picking up dry cleaning, lunch, shopping…every activity is essentially a monetary transaction. With Detours Partegàs takes sales receipts, the calling card of consumption, and turns those transactions inward. Phrases like “I can’t stand the house anymore,” “Some days I feel so worthless,” and “I am desperate for something new and exciting” appear on the receipts with each word itemized as a product and its cost. Essentially,

Detours shows how everything outside the home comes at a price, and even one’s most private thoughts can be nickel and dimed while in the midst of these transactions.

Image courtesy of Foxy Production

Image courtesy of Foxy Production

Image courtesy of Foxy Production

Ester is currently exhibiting a new body of work in her solo show, “The Passerby,” at Foxy Production, where she turns her focus to objects that would be found at construction sites and camp grounds rather than travel destinations and department stores. In “The Passerby,” she recreates and recontextualizes plastic tarps, buckets, box containers, and shipping labels by meticulously and beautifully recrafting them and placing them in a gallery. Tarps, which are cheap, durable, and meant to cover and protect things more precious than themselves, are transformed into gauzy polyurethane veils which are hung from the ceiling like fine silks. The crinkled texture of the heavy tarp, formally a weathered sign of use, is now an area of visual interest that is more comparable to delicate gold leaf than foldable plastic. The buckets and storage bins are cast in a colored resin with their handmade qualities not immediately apparent, encouraging viewers to closely inspect these items that they would otherwise ignore. These containers are filled with oversized silkscreened replicas of shipping labels and airline tags, which are documents of people and objects passing between various destinations.

Ester Partegàs’ ability to subtly yet effectively point out the deeper meanings inherent within seemingly inconsequential items helps us to gain a greater understanding of the world around us. She does very little to change these objects’ appearance or function, but by simply giving them some handmade love and attention and tweaking the context she amplifies their value. The effectiveness of her work has longterm sustainability beyond the gallery space, meaning we can learn how to train ourselves to be more mindful of the objects we live with everyday, appreciate their usefulness and craftsmanship, and therefore feel satisfied with simplicity. Doing so will lower our drive to consume and allow us to find peace with the way things are and not what they “should” be. Her work at Dikeou Collection and her show at Foxy Production begs us to be considerate of the space between places and things and the details that populate these spaces. In doing so, life starts to fill out and become whole as opposed to a series of connect-the-dot motions with so much emptiness in between.

-Hayley Richardson