Pilar Agüero-Esparza
We’re excited to welcome Pilar Agüero-Esparza in her first solo exhibition with the gallery, Darker than the Deepest Sea… Weaker than the Palest Blue, after her successful debut in our 2024 group exhibition, Calligraphy of Absence. Agüero-Esparza is recognized for her installations, paintings, and objects reflecting her Mexican heritage and the palette and politics of skin tone, specifically Brown and Black skin. This exhibition also addresses the love and grief for the recent loss of her partner and husband, Chris Esparza, an important cultural figure in the San Jose Latinx community.
Agüero-Esparza’s striped color field paintings mesmerize with unexpected intersections of woven leather and fringe, extolling the skill and indigeneity of her parents cobbler tradition, specifically the crafting of woven huarache sandals. Her exquisite chromatic stripes act as proxies for the categorization and hierarchies of skin tones and discriminatory practices. As Pilar describes, “By melding abstraction with the making strategies learned in childhood, I aim for a radical authenticity that generates tension along with material freshness and contradiction. Employing the language of abstraction, I delve into the tropes of Color Theory, blending a skin-tone palette with prismatic colors to highlight the complexities of skin color. I aim for viewers to perceive my works as ‘racialized abstractions’ and prompt contemplation of social dynamics and colorism within our culture.”
In lesser hands, the inclusion of material, tradition, theory, practice, heritage, race, and aesthetics might implode, but instead the elegant grace of the woven and the symmetry of the color fields present a striking attunement—a singular approach to how Agüero-Esparza navigates the politics of color.
In 2025, Agüero-Esparza received the prestigious Eureka Fellowship Award from the Fleishhacker Foundation in San Francisco. She’s exhibited her work in institutions including the San Jose Museum of Art, Triton Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, the De Young Museum, and the Montalvo Arts Center. In 2017, her work was featured in the exhibition “The U.S.-Mexico Border: Place, Imagination, and Possibility” at the Craft Contemporary Museum, Los Angeles, as part of the Getty Foundation Southern California initiative Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, an ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art. In 2019, the U.S.-Mexico Border exhibition traveled to Lille, France, as part of the Eldorado Lille 3000 arts festival. In 2022, as an artist-in-residence and Lucas Artist Fellow, she was commissioned to create a large-scale outdoor work for the exhibition “Claiming Space: Refiguring the Body in Landscape” at the Montalvo Arts Center.
Pilar Agüero-Esparza received a BA in Art from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an MFA in Spatial Art from San Jose State University. In 2025, she will receive the prestigious Eureka Fellowship Award from the Fleishhacker Foundation in San Francisco. Agüero-Esparza has exhibited her work in institutions including the San Jose Museum of Art, Triton Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, the De Young Museum, and the Montalvo Arts Center. In 2017, her work was featured in the exhibition “The U.S.-Mexico Border: Place, Imagination, and Possibility” at the Craft Contemporary Museum, Los Angeles, as part of the Getty Foundation Southern California initiative Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, an ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art. In 2019, the U.S.-Mexico Border exhibition traveled to Lille, France, as part of the Eldorado Lille 3000 arts festival. In 2022, as an artist-in-residence and Lucas Artist Fellow, she was commissioned to create a large-scale outdoor work for the exhibition “Claiming Space: Refiguring the Body in Landscape” at the Montalvo Arts Center.