Jaume Plensa JAUME PLENSA (Spain, 1955) is one of the world's foremost sculptors working in the public space, with over 30 projects spanning in a global scale including cities such as Chicago, Dubai, London, Liverpool, Nice, Tokyo, and Toronto.
Over the past 25 years, the artist has produced a rich body of work in the studio and the public realm. By combining conventional sculptural materials (glass, steel, bronze, aluminum) with more unconventional media (water, light, sound, video), and frequently incorporating text, Plensa creates hybrid works of intricate energy and psychology. Plensa was born in Barcelona, in 1955, and studied art there. Over the last decade he has become one of the world’s most celebrated public artists, best known for wondrously monumental figurative sculptures that can be seen from Tokyo to Dubai.
“Shakespeare is the best definition of sculpture,” he once said, quoting the “sleep no more” soliloquy from Macbeth. “You are working always with physical elements. You are always touching, touching. But you can’t describe it.” Crown Fountain, Chicago 2004!
Crown Fountain at Millennium Park in Chicago. It opened in July 2004. The fountain is composed of a black granite reflecting pool placed between a pair of glass brick towers. The towers are 50 feet (15 m) tall, and they use LEDs to display digital videos on the inward faces.
Crown Fountain, Chicago 2004!
Documentation
TED Talk BLAKE IN GATESHEAD, 1996!
Site: Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art. Gateshead. (U.K.)
Project: "Temporary Contemporary. Visual Arts Year" U.K. Cast iron, steel, glass, light. Cast iron plate: 5 x 500 cm Fence: 180 x 150 cm Height light: 2 km approximately
Walking near the Tyne and thinking of Blake, I thought a new bridge was needed, a vertical bridge to bring us towards another kind of landscape. That landscape is above our heads and underneath our feet and maybe because it is too close or too far it is unattainable. To build a bridge, a bridge of light in Gateshead, near the Tyne and thinking of Blake. The Dream, 2007-2009!
In 2007, working closely with a group of local ex-miners, he was also commissioned to create a new work on the landmark site of a former colliery near St Helens, Liverpool, as part of the Big Art Project, a major national public art project in UK.
Unveiled in spring 2009, the Dream consists of an elongated white structure 20 meters (66 ft) tall, weighing 500 tons, which has been carved to resemble the head and neck of a young woman with her eyes closed in meditation. The structure is coated in sparkling white Spanish dolomite, as a contrast to the coal which used to be mined there.
Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Gran Hya Hotel New York Madison park, New York Salzburg University, Australia Rio- Dream Marianna EL ALMA DEL EBRO, 2008!
Site: ExpoZaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain
Painted stainless steel
11 metre x 850 x 840 cm
El alma del Ebro (the soul of Ebro) was created for the International Exposition in Zaragoza, Spain, the theme of which was "Water and Sustainable Development". It is 11 meters high, the sculpted letters representing cells of the human body which is over 60% water. Its white letters and hollow structure invite the viewer to look inside and reflect on the relationship between human beings and water. EL ALMA DEL EBRO, 2008!
Plensa is obsessive with image in his works of art that represent the body. Even when the body is not explicitly represented, the mime c dimensions of the work, the descrip ve precision of his sculptures, evoke it. Words, have been a constant element of his work from the outset, and are conceived chiefly as an organic secre on. It seems that Plensa applies the formula described by Michel Leiris when explaining Tzara’s work: “We think through our mouths”. The first words that Plensa inscribed on his sculptures are a reply. House of Knowledge, UK 2008
Painted stainless steel
800 x 550 x 530 cm
Silent Rain, 2003 !
Iron, in eight parts. With text by famous writers like Baudelaire, Ginsberg, and Shakespeare. Silent Rain, 2003 !
“One of my obsessions is silence, silence as a key need. And in a very noisy world, silence is to be produced, must "make", because there, an inner silence for people to be themselves again” (Jaume Plensa in el cultural.es, 2000, online) Sho, 2007!
Sho is a sculpture that represents a female head and is formed by white- painted stainless steel openwork mesh. It stands approximately 13 feet tall and 10 feet wide and weighs 660 pounds. Sho, 2009!
Sho is a sculpture that represents a female head and is formed by white- painted stainless steel openwork mesh. It stands approximately 13 feet tall and 10 feet wide and weighs 660 pounds. Dialogue, 2009, Sweden !
“One of my obsessions is silence, silence as a key need. And in a very noisy world, silence is to be produced, must "make", because there, an inner silence for people to be themselves again” (Jaume Plensa in el cultural.es, 2000, online) Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 2011 Documenta on