Hauser & Wirth Signs rafa esparza, Adobe Artist of the 'Brown Architectures'

By Tom Whitfield

Hauser & Wirth, one of the world's largest galleries, now represents Los Angeles–based artist rafa esparza, best known for installations, sculptures and paintings made from adobe. The representation runs jointly with Commonwealth and Council, the Los Angeles gallery that has backed esparza for years — a detail worth noting, since it means the mega-gallery has not absorbed the artist's existing relationships wholesale.

The deal makes esparza one of the few living Latinx artists represented by a mega-gallery. Hauser & Wirth's roster in this category also includes Firelei Baéz and Angel Otero. That figure — "few" — is the story's quiet indictment: the artist's market milestone doubles as evidence of how rare such appointments remain.

What does the representation change for viewers?

A schedule, first. Esparza will debut a new work at Hauser & Wirth's Art Basel Miami Beach booth next month. His first solo exhibition with the gallery opens in fall 2027 in one of its New York spaces. Next February, Zolo Press will publish his first monograph, rafa esparza: Works on Adobe.

Then, materially, the work itself. Since 2014, esparza has worked with adobe — a mix of loam, straw, manure and water, typically formed into bricks baked in the sun. He learned the technique from his father, whose family has used adobe for generations in Durango, Mexico.

The material choice is deliberately awkward for institutions. Adobe's organic contents sit badly with museums' strict climate-control settings, and esparza's self-described "brown architectures" confront the white cube directly. Many of his interventions invite visitors to walk on the adobe, which crumbles over the course of the exhibition. The work degrades by design; a gallery representing it is, in effect, agreeing to sell entropy.

Where the work has appeared

• The 2016 Made in L.A. biennial at the Hammer Museum, on an outdoor terrace
• The 2017 Whitney Biennial, as a ground-floor rotunda where Latinx artists outside the biennial — among them Beatriz Cortez, Gala Porras-Kim, Eamon Ore-Girón and Nao Bustamante — showed work or performed; the bricks later moved to the facade and interior of Ballroom Marfa in Texas
• Solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles and ICA Los Angeles (both 2018), Performance Space New York (2019) and Artists Space (2023)
• Two-person shows with Cortez at the Americas Society, New York (2025) and the Museo Anahuacalli, Mexico City (2026)
• Group shows including "Xican-a.o.x Body" at the Cheech (2023), "At the Edge of the Sun" at Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles (2024), Prospect.6 in New Orleans (2025) and "Let us Gather in a Flourishing Way" at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum (2026)

More recently, esparza has painted directly onto adobe, producing intimate portraits, medium-sized translations of documentary photographs and large-scale sculptures supported by visible metal armatures. Tratos: Después de Pedro Valtierra Entre Redadas (2025–26) embedded a US flag in the metal structure supporting a painting of a police officer manhandling a protester.

Hauser & Wirth president Marc Payot said in a statement: "We are thrilled to join Commonwealth and Council in representing rafa esparza, an artist of profound humanity and dedication to community." He added that esparza "brings real warmth to a conceptual practice that is enormously rigorous and disciplined, drawing the earth quite literally into works that mark time and the human hand while harkening to centuries of challenging questions about ownership, agency and belonging. It will be an honor to share his art with increasingly international audiences and new generations."

The statement promises international reach. Whether adobe — a material built to crack — can survive that reach intact is the question the fall 2027 New York solo show will begin to answer.