Yorkshire Sculpture Park RESOURCE FILE

Jaume Plensa Jaume Plensa biography

Jaume Plensa is a leading international sculptor, born in Barcelona in 1955. Since 1980, the year when he made himself known with his first exhibition in Barcelona, Plensa has worked across the world and currently resides between Barcelona and Paris. He has taught at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris and in The School of the Art Institute of Chicago during 2009-2010.

Since 1992 Plensa has obtained various distinctions and awards, both national and international, notably his investiture as a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture (1993), the National Award for Plastic Arts – National Culture Awards of the Government of Catalonia 1997, Barcelona, and an Honorary Doctorate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA, 2005. His work has been exhibited in many of the world's leading contemporary art institutions in Europe, the United States and Japan including Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain; the Jeu de Paume, Paris, France; Henry Moore Sculpture Trust, Halifax, UK; BALTIC The Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK; the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; IVAM Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Valencia, Spain; The Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA and The Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, USA.

Plensa’s career has progressed throughout various stages, involving innovative use of many different materials. In the early 1980s the central material of his work was wrought iron, making anthropomorphic shapes, often with recovered materials iron, bronze, and copper. In 1986 Plensa began a series of sculptures in cast iron, which he melted using the oldest technique of casting metals. His pioneering use of cast iron brought him international acclaim. Virtually abandoning all traces of figuration he began use incorporate light with iron to echo the intense colour of the material when molten. In 1988 Plensa first used text in relief: the piece Sleep No More quotes a line from Shakespear’s Matchbeth. This use of poetic text fixes and gives volume to intangible fragile ideas. Plensa continues to work with light and casting, although he has varied his materials, using aluminum, bronze, brass, glass, steel or resin according to the requirements of the work itself or the space. In recent years his casting materials have been synthetic resin, and glass with their mysterious translucency, in which he has developed a family of works thought of as ‘houses’ or containers for the soul that act as meditative spaces. Light, sound and text endow his current work a unique poetic sense of language. Plensa's work evokes emotion and stimulates intellectual engagement by posing conceptual dualities in his work (interior/exterior, volume/emptiness, light/dark), he seeks to connect with his viewers on an intuitive level and often it is their participation, or the object/viewer relationship, that completes his work. In parallel with his sculptural work and at the same level of importance, the artist has created an extensive body of drawings, which relate closely to his sculpture. These Collages of photographs, texts, superimpositions and image manipulation combine to give a sense that inevitably brings it close to sculpture. Another aspect of Plensa’s practice is his work on opera projects. Since 1995 he has collaborated on stage designs for theatre and opera productions including La Fura dels Baus: Atlantida (by Manuel de Falla) for the Granada Festival in 1996, Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien (by Claude Debussy) for the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma in 1997, La Damnation de Faust (by Hector Berlioz) for the Salzburger Festspiele in 1999, Die Zauberflöte (by Mozart) for the Ruhr Triennale Bochum in 2003.; Le Château de Barbe-Bleue by Bela Bartok and Le Journal d’un Disparu by Leos Janacek, for the Opéra de Paris, co produced with the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona in 2007.

A significant part of Plensa’s practice is producing work for the public realm and he has permanent works installed in Spain, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, Korea, Germany, Canada, and USA.

The Crown Fountain (2004) is one of Plensa’s largest public art projects in Chicago’s Millennium Park. Breathing (2005) for the new BBC building in London; Conversation à Nice (2007) for the place Masséna in Nice, France; El Alma del Ebro for the Expo Zaragoza 2008, in Zaragoza, Spain; Dream (2009) for St. Helens, Liverpool, UK; World Voices (2010) for the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, UAE. 2011 will also see Plensa’s first public art project in New York City. Echo will be presented from 5 May – 14 August 2011 by the Madison Square Park Conservancy. In the UK, Chichester Cathedral recently announced Plensa’s winning proposal for the Hussey Memorial Commission, Together, expected to be unveiled in the Cathedral in 2012.

1955 Born in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain

Studied art in Barcelona, in the Llotja School and in the Escola Superior de Belles Arts de Sant Jordi.

1980 First solo show: Estructures at Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain.

1981 Produces his earliest work: Itinerari, a system of weights, lines, and pulleys strung together in open metal frames creating a complex interrelated network.

1982 Constructs his first glasswork: Llibre de Vidre, a glass book containing sixteen drawings and a poem by Toni Tapies.

Mid 1980’s Leaves Spain to work and teach abroad in Berlin, Germany. The central feature of his work is wrought iron, largely working with recovered materials – iron, bronze, and copper.

1983 Exhibits at Ignacio de Lassaletta Gallery, Barcelona, Spain.

1984 Begins exhibiting internationally with his solo show: Skulturen at Galerie Folker Skulima, Berlin, Germany.

1985 Foundry experience of working with molten iron

1986 Begins working on a series of sculpture in cast iron, using the oldest technique of casting metals.

First public commission at Placa Francesc Layret, Barcelona, Spain: Personatges, three anthropomorphic cast iron sculptures that sit on rocks.

1987 Exhibits extensively in Europe with solo and group exhibitions in Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Austria.

1988 First exhibits in USA at the The Sharpe Gallery, New York.

1989 Produces Prière inspired by The Litanies of Satan by Baudelaire.

1990 Produces Dell’arte II, a public commission installed in Jardi d'Escultures at the Fundacio Joan Miro, Barcelona, Spain.

1991 Begins using light with cast iron in the works Desir and La Neige Rouge.

Commissioned by the City of Auch and the Ministère de l'Education Nationale et de la Culture to produce the public sculpture: Auch, a fortress-like architectonical sculpture. First public sculpture to use light.

1992 Invited to participate in Olimpiada Cultural’92, outdoor sculptures exhibited around Barcelona to mark the 25th Olympic Games. Exhibits Born at the Passeig del Born, Barcelona, Spain.

First solo show in the UK, at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, Scotland.

Firenze I and Firenze II, which take the question mark as their point of departure.

1993 Awarded the winner of Medaille des Chevaliers des Arts et Lettres from France's Minister of Culture.

Invited to the UK by the Henry Moore Institute. Creates his first work using water: The Personal Miraculous Fountain, exhibited at the Henry Moore Sculpture Studio, Halifax, UK.

Micce-Prodigiosa Fontana Individuale: One-day performance selling bottle water as a miracle cure in the village of Nocera Umbra, Italy.

1994 The Personal Miraculous Fountain exhibition The Henry Moore Studio at Dean Clough, Halifax.

Explores translucent materials and begins to work with resin.

1995 Towers and cabinets began to make a frequent appearance in his work.

1996 First public commission in the UK: Blake in Gateshed at the Baltic Centre of Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK.

Began working with stage and costume design for Alex Ollé and Carlos Padrissa for La Fura dels Baus: Atlantida (by Manuel de Falla) for the Granada Festival, Spain.

Residency award by the Atelier Calder Foundation to live for six months in the Alexander Calder's studio-house, UK.

1997 National Award for Plastic Arts – National Culture Awards of the Government of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain.

His complete works were presented at the Fundacio Joan Miro in Barcelona, at the Jeu de Paume in Paris, in the Malmo Konsthall and in the Stadtischen Kunsthall in Mannheim.

Creates his first piece with glass bricks: Wie ein Hauch

1998 The Personal Miraculous Fountain shown at Yorkshire Sculpture Park as part of Artranspenine 98.

Love Sounds first shown at the Kestner Gesellschaft in Hannover. First uses sound by recording a soundtrack of his own bloodstream played inside five intimate alabaster cells. First uses cymbals in the installation Wispern, drops of water falls slowly from the ceiling onto the cymbal, causing a sound.

1999 Started to create delicate faces with magazine collages exhibited at Galerie Scheffel, Bad Homburg, Germany

2000 First public commission in the USA: El Corazón de las Palabras at the USA Today Headquarters, Mclean, Virginia.

Public projects in Japan

2001 Exhibits his three-part floor work: Freud’s Children exhibited at Bethmannhof, Germany. Three vessels are connected by the drip of a pump that supplies and fills the different-sized vessels with water like a closed blood circulation.

2002 Public commission Bridge of Light opens in Mishkenot Sha’ananim, Jerusalem, Israel

2003 Public commission Talking Continents opens at the Jacksonville Arena Plaza, Jacksonville, Florida, USA

First addresses the idea of the tattoo on the body. Creates Tattoo, a sculpture coated in words and addressed the theme of being physically marked by personal events and experiences corresponding to the notion that everything we experience is directly engraved onto our bodies.

Creates his first ceiling-hung curtain of cast metal letter: Silent Rain shown in the first USA traveling exhibition Silent Noise.

2004 The Crown Fountain opens at Millennium Park in Chicago, Illinois, USA.

2005 Receives Honorary Doctorate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA

Public commission Breathing installed in the BBC building in London, UK.

2006 Wins the Bombay Sapphire Prize in London for the Crown Fountain, Chicago’s Millennium Park. USA

2007 Commission Conversation à Nice for the place Masséna opens in Nice, France.

Begins working with a group of local ex-miners and was commissioned to create a new work on the landmark site of the former Sutton Manor Colliery in St Helens, Merseyside, Northwest England as part of the Big Art Project, a major national public art initiative linked to Channel 4.

Heitland Foundation Award, Celle, Germany.

2008 Solo exhibition: Save our Souls at the Albion Gallery, London Breathing is dedicated by the incumbent Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, as a memorial to journalists killed whilst undertaking their work.

2009 Dream opens for St. Helens, Liverpool, UK.

Collaborates as professor invited at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA

2009 Marsh Award for Public Sculpture, London, UK and the Precast Concrete Society Special creativity Award, London.

2010 Creates public commission World Voices for the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, UAE and Ogijima's Soul for the Ogijima Island in Japan.

Awilda opens for The Ninth Salzburg Art Project, Salzburg, Austria.

Civic Trust Award, Liverpool, UK.

2011 Jaume Plensa at Yorkshire Sculpture Park opens

Jaume Plensa at YSP

Internationally renowned Spanish artist Jaume Plensa describes his exhibition at Yorkshire Sculpture Park as the most complete he has ever staged. The artist’s work falls into clearly defined yet related groups that he describes as ‘families’; here many of these families are represented in a complex series of dialogues that unfold and resonate through the exhibition. This ongoing conversation begins with La Llarga Nit (blind) near the Park entrance which, though its eyes are covered, is turned to face the two part sculpture Spiegel. Then, moving through the Centre, the work Silhouettes (Blake – Canetti – Valente) is suspended in the space above our heads, encouraging us to read the excerpts of poetry it presents. Once in the Bothy Garden the towering presence of House of Knowledge faces out towards Longside and defines the axis around which the rest of the exhibition falls. This central line denotes the middle of the space between the heads of Irma and Nuria on the gallery roof and the central figure of the Heart of Trees, as well as being the centre of the gallery itself. Also acting as a literal and conceptual spine is Twenty-nine Palms, a curtain of text running almost fifty metres along the gallery concourse, through which both the indoor and outdoor works are visible. Whilst he is known for several high profile, critically acclaimed projects in the public realm across the world, including the Crown Fountain in Chicago, Dream in St Helens and Ogijima’s Soul in Japan, Plensa has never held an exhibition that brings together his work for indoors and the open air in such an integrated way.

Plensa’s work always deals with humanity, with body and soul, and is largely figurative. Even when the body is physically absent it is implied: gongs need to be struck by a mallet held in a hand to create sound; empty houses or cells require the presence of a person to make them compete; and text needs to be read and absorbed by the human mind. Whether fashioned in steel, glass, bronze or alabaster or with light, vibration or sound, the ideas and associations are the central concern. Plensa believes that sculpture is an extraordinary vehicle through which to access our emotions and thoughts; his work poses questions and sets up situations where we are encouraged to think again, to talk with one another, to be silent and meditative, to touch, to be together. The artist’s work is particularly concerned with the fact that people are losing the ability to converse, both with others and with themselves, and his work actively sets out to make us reconnect with our own souls. To Plensa, life is the key concern and he describes art as merely a consequence of life, but one which possesses an enormous capacity to touch people deeply, to introduce beauty into any situation, to celebrate our potential.

Plensa is very widely read and often refers to how his family home was filled with books as a child. Throughout his life he has discovered poems and texts that have moved him profoundly and it is these rather than the visual arts that have provided the broadest source of inspiration, often being directly referenced in his own work. Yet it is not just works of literature that fascinate him, but language itself. An abundance of letters and words, often forming the outline or shell of the human body, has come to characterise his sculpture and drawing. Plensa’s use of both language and the figure makes his work particularly accessible and poignant as it exists directly in the world we inhabit; it is universal. Yet through these material elements it reaches out to the immaterial, to the mind and the soul; even when alluding to life’s adversity it is hopeful and unashamedly beautiful.

Selected Solo Exhibitions

1980 Estructures, Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain 1981 Tres noms nous, Galería 13, Barcelona, Spain 1982 Llibre de vidre, Galería Eude, Barcelona, Spain 1983 Plensa, Galería Ignacio de Lassaletta, Barcelona, Spain 1984 Jaume Plensa, Galerie Axe Actuel, Toulouse, France Jaume Plensa , Skulpturen, Galerie Folker Skulima, Berlin, Germany 1985 Jaume Plensa, Galería Juana de Aizpuru, Madrid, Spain Jaume Plensa, Galerie Lola Gassin, Nice, France 1986 Jaume Plensa, Escultures, Galería Maeght, Barcelona, Spain 1987 Jaume Plensa, Galerie Philippe Guimiot, Bruxelles, Belgium Jaume Plensa, Halle Sud, Geneva, Switzerland 1988 Jaume Plensa, The Sharpe Gallery, New York, USA Jaume Plensa, Galerie Folker Skulima, Berlin, Germany Jaume Plensa, Musée d'Art Contemporain, Lyon, France Jaume Plensa, Galería Rita García, Valencia, Spain 1989 Jaume Plensa, The Sharpe Gallery, New York, USA Jaume Plensa, sculptures et dessins, Galerie Philippe Guimiot, Bruxelles, Belgium Jaume Plensa, Galería Carles Taché, Barcelona, Spain 1990 Dibuixos, Galería Carles Taché, Barcelona, Spain Jaume Plensa, Eglise de Courmerlois - Silo Art Contemporain, Reims-Val-de-Vesle, France Jaume Plensa, Galerie de France, Paris, France 1991 Jaume Plensa, P.S. Gallery, Tokyo, Japan Monocroms, Galería B.A.T., Madrid, Spain Jaume Plensa, Galerie Eric Franck, Geneva, Switzerland 1992 Jaume Plensa, The Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, UK Jaume Plensa, Galería Carles Taché, Barcelona, Spain Jaume Plensa, Galleria Gentili, Firenze, Italy 1993 Jaume Plensa, Galerie Volker Diehl, Berlin, Germany Mémoires Jumelles, Galerie Alice Pauli, Lausanne, Switzerland Mémoires Jumelles, Galerie de France, Paris, France 1994 Cal.ligrafies, Edicions T Galería d'Art, Barcelona, Spain Jaume Plensa. Un Sculpteur, une Ville, Valence, France Jaume Plensa, Galleria Civica Modena, Modena, Italy The Personal Miraculous Fountain, The Henry Moore Studio at Dean Clough, Halifax, UK 1995 Wonderland, Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris, France One Thought fills Immensity, Städtische Galerie, Göppingen, Germany 1996 Jaume Plensa, Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain Blake in Gateshead, Baltic Flour Mills, Gateshead, UK Close up, Office in Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv, Israel Islands, Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago, USA Jaume Plensa, Centre de Cultura Sa Nostra, Palma de Mallorca, Spain 1997 Wie ein Hauch, Galerie Volker Diehl, Berlin, Germany Rumore, Fattoria di Celle, Santomato di Pistoia, Italy Jaume Plensa, Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris. F / Malmö Konsthall, Malmö, SW /Städtische Kunsthalle Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany 1998 Jaume Plensa, Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea - Palazzo Forti, Verona, Italy Dallas?...Caracas?, The MAC-The Mckiney Avenue Contemporarain Art, Dallas. USA / Fundación Museo Jacobo Borges, Caracas, Venezuela Golden Sigh, Galerie Alice Pauli, Lausanne, Switzerland Jaume Plensa, Galerie Pièce Unique, Paris, France Water, Fonds Régional d'Art Contemporain de Picardie, Amiens, France 1999 Etwas von mir, Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Kiel, Germany Jaume Plensa, Tamada Projects Corporation, Tokyo, Japan Bruit, Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris, France Komm mit, komm mit!, Rupertinum Museum, Salzburg, Austria Whisper, Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago, USA Wanderers Nachtlied, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung, Ludwig, Palais Liechtenstein, Wien, Austria Love Sounds, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover, Germany 2000 Twin Shadows, Richard Gray Gallery, New York / Galerie Lelong, New York, USA Jaume Plensa, Proverbs of Hell, Mario Mauroner Contemporary Art, Salzburg, Austria Jaume Plensa. 360 º, Museo Municipal de Málaga, Málaga, Spain Chaos–Saliva, Palacio de Velázquez, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain 2001 Close up, Mestna Galerija, Ljubljana, Slovenia Logbook, Galerie Diehl-Vorderwuelbecke, Berlin, Germany Europa, Galería Toni Tàpies, Barcelona, Spain 2002 Rumor, Centro Cultural de España, Mexico D.F, Mexico Wispern, Església de Sant Domingo, Pollença, Mallorca, Spain B.OPEN, Jaume Plensa, The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK Jaume Plensa, Fondation Européenne pour la Sculpture, Parc Tournay-Solvay, Bruxelles, Belgium Primary Thoughts, Galería Helga de Alvear, Madrid, Spain 2003 Crystal Rain, Galerie Lelong, Paris, France Jaume Plensa, Galerie Academia, Salzburg, Austria Who? Why?, Galerie Lelong, New York, USA Hot? Sex?, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain 2004 Anònim, Galeria Toni Tàpies, Barcelona, Spain Jaume Plensa. Livres, estampes et multiples sur papier 1978-2003, Musée des Beaux Arts, Caen. F / Fundación César Manrique, Lanzarote, Spain Il suono del sangue parla la stessa lingua, VOLUME!, Rome, Italy Fiumi e cenere, Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena, Italy Silent Noise, The Arts Club of Chicago, Chicago / Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans /University Gallery - Fine Arts Center UMASS, Amherst, USA 2005 Jaume Plensa, CAC, Centro de Arte Contemporaneo de Málaga, Málaga, Spain Is art something in between?, Kunsthalle Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany Song of Songs, Albion Gallery, London, UK Glückauf?, Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany Jaume Plensa. Opera, Theatre and Friends, Museo Colecciones ICO, Madrid, Spain 2006 I in his eyes as one that found peace, Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago / New York, USA Une âme, deux corps… trois ombres, Galerie Lelong, Paris, France Jerusalem, Museu d’Art Modern i Contemporani Es Baluard, L’Aljub, Palma de Mallorca, Spain Canetti’s Dream, Mario Mauroner Contemporary Art, Vienna, Austria Songs and Shadows, Galerie Lelong, New York, USA Jaume Plensa, Livres, estampes et multiples sur papier 1978-2006, Centre de la Gravure La Louvière, La Louvière. B / Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró, Palma de Mallorca, Spain 2007 Jaume Plensa, IVAM-Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Valencia, Spain Jaume Plensa, MAMAC, Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain, Nice, France Nomade, Bastion Saint-Jaume Quaid Rambaud, exhibition organised by Musée Picasso. Antibes, France Silent Voices, Museum at Tamada Projects, Tokyo, Japan Jaume Plensa, Preis der Heitland Foundation, Gotische Halle, Schloss, Celle, Germany Jaume Plensa / Shakespeare, Centro Cultural Fundación Círculo de Lectores, Barcelona, Spain Sinónimos, Círculo de Bellas Artes. Madrid, Spain 2008 Jaume Plensa, Mimmo Scognamiglio Artecontemporanea, Milano, Italy Jaume Plensa, Centro de Arte Caja de Burgos, Burgos, Spain Jaume Plensa, Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA Jaume Plensa, La Riva de Acheronte, Im Dialog IX, Stadtkirche, Darmstadt, Germany Jaume Plensa, Save our Souls, Albion Gallery, London, UK 2009 Jerusalem, Espacio Cultural El Tanque, Tenerife, Canary Islands Triptych, Mario Mauroner Contemporary Art, Vienna, Austria In the Midst of Dreams, Galerie Lelong, New York, USA Jaume Plensa, Galeria Toni Tàpies, Barcelona, Spain Slumberland, Galerie Lelong, Paris, France Silent Music, Diehl + Gallery One, Moscow, Russia 2010 Cantique des Cantiques, Galerie Alice Pauli, Lausanne, Switzerland Arround Shadows, Galerie Scheffel, Bad Homburg, Germany Les alphabets de l'âme, Galerie Lelong, Paris, France L'Ame des Mots, Musée Picasso, Antibes, France Jaume Plensa, Obra sobre papel Galería Estiarte, Madrid, Spain Genus and Species, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, USA

Selected works

Auch, 1990-1991 Escalier Monumentale and Place Barbés, Auch, France Commissioned by the City of Auch and the Ministère de l'Education Nationale et de la Culture. Délégation aux Arts Plastiques, 1990

Born, 1992 Passeig del Born, Barcelona, Spain Commissioned by Cultural Olympiad,s.a. The Olympic Games of Barcelona and the City of Barcelona, 1992. Project: Configuracions Urbanes, Barcelona

Faret Tachikawa, 1993-1994 Tachikawa City, Japan Commissioned by The Housing and Urban Development Corporation and Tachikawa City, 1993

Islas, 1994-1995 Avenida General Franco, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain Commissioned by the Colegio de Arquitectos de Canarias, 1994

Blake in Gateshead, 1996 Baltic Centre of Contemporary Art, Gateshead, U.K Commissioned by the Metropolitan Borough Council Libraries and Arts, Gateshead, 1996

Twins II, 1998 Kimpo Sculpture Park, Kimpo, Seoul, Korea Commissioned by KBS CPE Office and Kimpo City, 1998

Capsa de Llum, 1998 Gran Via de Jaume I and Avenida Ramon Folch, Girona, Spain Commissioned by the City of Girona, 1997

The House of Birds, 1999 Mion Nakasato, Japan Commissioned by the "Echigo-Tsumari Art Festival 2000”, 1998 Project: Tsumari-go Art Necklace Project.

Transparent Doubts, 2000 University of Shizuoka for Culture and Art. Hamamatsu, Japan Commissioned by the University of Shizuoka for Culture and Art, Hamamatsu, 1999

Seven Deities of Good Fortune, 2000 Daikanyama, Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan Commissioned by Daikanyama Project, 1999

Gläserner Seele or Mr.Net in Brandenburg, 2000 Land Brandenburg, Germany Commissioned by Ministerium für Wirtschaft des Landes Brandenburg, 1999 Project: Europa, EXPO 2000 Hannover

L’âme de la Vallée, 1999-2000 Vallorbe, Switzerland Commissioned by Pierre Magnenat and Jaquet SA, 1999

Casa Dorada Para Pajaros, 1998-2001 Plaza Félix Sáenz, Málaga, Spain Acquired by the City of Málaga, 2001

El Corazón de las Palabras, 2000 USA Today Headquarters, Mclean, Virginia, USA Commissioned by Gannett / USA Today, 2000

Magritte’s Dream, 2001 Public Art: Japan + Practice Project, Aino Station, Fukuroi City, Japan Commissioned by Fukuroi City, 2000

Mi Casa en Torrelavega, 2001 Paseo de Julio Hauzeur, Torrelavega, Spain Commission for public spaces.

Seele?, 2002 Neardenthal Park, Düsseldorf, Germany Commissioned by Neanderthal Museum

Bridge of light, 2002 Mishkenot Sha'ananim, Jerusalem, Israel Commissioned by The Jerusalem Foundation, 1998

Talking Continents, 2003 Jacksonville Arena Plaza, Florida, USA Commissioned by Art in Public Places Commission, City of Jacksonville

As One, 2003 Toronto Pearson International Airport (Location in Airport Ð International Baggage Claim), Canada. Commissioned by Greater Toronto Airports Authority

Crown Fountain, 2004 Millennium Park, Chicago, USA Commissioned by Public Art Program, Department Of Cultural Affairs, City of Chicago with support of Henry Crown And Company, 2000

Breathing, 2005 BBC Broadcasting House, London, UK, Commissioned by BBC Broadcasting House, 2003

Nomade, 2007 Displayed during Art Basel, Miami Beach, December 6–9, 2007 The Musée Picasso in Antibes, France. 2007 Pappajohn Sculpture Park, Des Moines, USA

Conversations à Nice, 2007 Place Masséna, Côte d’Azur, Nice, France Commissioned by la Communauté d’Agglomération Nice

Sho, 2007 Exhibited at Art Chicago, Chicago, USA

Sleep No More, 2008 Durham USA Commissioned by Capital Broadcasting Company for the Durham Performing Arts Centre

Dialogue, 2009 Permanent Installation, Copperhill Mountain Lodge, Åre, Sweden

Dream, 2009 St Helens, Liverpool, U.K Commission by St Helens Council/Liverpool Biennial for Contemporary Art U.K, 2007

World Voices, 2010 Dubai, United Arab Emirates Commission in the lobby of the tallest tower of the world.

Nomade, 2010 Bastión Saint-Jaume. Port Vauban, Antibes Commissioned by Mairie d'Antibes - Musée Picasso, Antibes, France

Ogijima’s Soul, 2010 Ogijima Community Hall, Ogijima, Seto Inland Sea, Kagawa Prefecture, Japan Commissioned by The City of Takamatsu, Japan

Awilda in Salzburg, 2010 Dietrichsrush, Salzburg University, Sigmund Haffner-Gasser, Salzburg, Austria Commisioned by MKM / Sitiftung für Kunst und Kulture.V / Salzburg Foundation. Austria 2010 Project: Salzburg Art Project 2010

Body of Knowledge, 2010 Goethe Universität Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main Comissioned by: Goethe Universität Frankfurt, Germany 2009

Works in museums and public collections

Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA Baltic, The Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK Banco de España, Madrid, Spain Banque Européenne d’Investissement, Luxembourg Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, France Caja de Burgos, Burgos, Spain Centre de Cultura Sa Nostra, Palma de Mallorca, Spain Colección AENA, Madrid, Spain Colección de Escultura Contemporanea RENFE, Madrid, Spain Colección Instituto de Crédito Oficial, Madrid, Spain Collecció Testimoni La Caixa, Barcelona, Spain Collecció Testimoni La Caixa, Madrid, Spain Colección Fundación Coca‐Cola, Spain The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, USA Deutsche Bank, Barcelona, Spain Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa Fundació d’Art Contemporari La Caixa, Barcelona, Spain Fondation d'Art Contemporain Daniel and Florence Guerlain, Les Mesnuls, France Fondation pour l’Art Contemporain Claudine et Jean‐Marc Salomon, Alex, France Fonds Municipal d’Art Contemporain, Paris, France Fonds National d'Art Contemporain, Paris, France Fonds Régional d'Art Contemporain, Castres, France Fonds Régional d'Art Contemporain Picardie, Amiens, France Fons d'Art de la Generalitat de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain Foundation Paribas, Paris, France Fundación Caja de Burgos, Burgos, Spain Fundación Codespa, Barcelona, Spain Fundación Jorge Castillo, Madrid, Spain Fundación Juan March, Madrid, Spain Fundació Fran Daurel, Barcelona, Spain Fundació Vila Casas, Barcelona, Spain Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA Galeria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Palazzo Forti, Verona, Italy Guerlain Foundation, Paris, France Junta de Comunidades de Castilla la Mancha, Toledo, Spain Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, USA Kirishima Open Air Museum, Kyushu, Japan Manufactures Nationales de Sèvres, Sèvres, France Meadows Museum of Art at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas Mie Prefectural Art Museum, Japan Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, USA Mobilier National & Manufactures Nationales des Tapis et Tapisseries, France Musée d'Art Contemporain, Ceret, France Musée d'Art Contemporain, Lyon, France Musée du Fonds Regional d'Art Contemporain Midi‐Pyrénées, Toulouse, France Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Español Patio Herreriano, Valladolid, Spain Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Sofía Imber, Caracas, Venezuela Museo de Bellas Artes de Alava, Vitoria, Spain Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain Museum Marugame Hirai, Marugame, Japan Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, Austria Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham, USA Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, USA North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, USA Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, USA Skissernas Museum, Lund, Sweden Städtische Galerie Göppingen, Göppingen, Germany Städtische Kunsthalle Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany University of Shizuoka for Culture and Art, Hamamatsu, Japan Significant public projects

Ogijima’s Soul 2010

Ogijima’s Soul is a large structure with letters of various alphabets all over the roof of the Ogijima Exchange Center, in Ogijima, Japan. Plensa designed the glass building, which is surrounded by water, in 2009. The concept of the project was to create an interchange building and a gathering place for its community to welcomes visitors and guests. The translucent space of the house allows people to see the landscape of the island, the beauty of the little town on the hill and the inland sea that opens in front of the harbor. The house is covered and protected by a roof made out of different alphabets. Like a poetic cloud, the roof will project shadows of these alphabets to the ground during the day and to the sky in the night. The letters composing the roof are random. They are simple letters, no words, and they aim to represent the different cultures of the world, using the following alphabets: Japanese, Hebrew, Arabic, Latin, Chinese, Greek, Russian and Hindi. An alphabet is probably that most precise expression of one culture. It is the product that results after centuries of traditions, developing and transforming. The project plays homage to Ogijima’s people. The shape of the building is inspired by the shape of a shellfish that is always building it’s own house around its body. This project recalls the big effort that island communities have been doing during the ages to create and protect their culture and pays homage to the sea as a bridge connecting cultures.

World Voices 2010

Jaume Plensa’s World Voices is composed of 196 cymbals that represent the 196 countries of the world - symbolic to Burj Dubai being a collaboration of people from across the globe and befitting its global iconic status. Cast in bronze and brass alloy and plated with 18-carat gold, the cymbals are horizontally suspended onto titanium rods anchored at the bottom of two pools, symbolizing reeds in a lake. Finished by hand, the cymbals create a distinct timbre as they are struck by dripping water, which the artist compared to the sound of water falling on leaves. Burj Dubai’s architects and interior designers Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) approached international and Middle East-based artists to submit concepts for the centerpiece of Dubai’s the Burj Dubai, the tallest tower in the world. Plensa was awarded the commission, which was chosen from a shortlist of five. World Voices claims pride of place in the tower’s lobby and is part of 1000 artworks selected for other locations in the building. In response to the artist's specifications, World Voices was developed custom technology that creates the right size, volume, and control of the droplets that fall approximately 60 feet (18.2m) from the atrium's gold-leaf ceiling onto 18 of the gold cymbals. The droplets fall through 1in / 25 mm diameter openings in the lobby's atrium ceiling, and create a natural rhythm as they make contact with the cymbals below. Crystal developed the gravity-fed water controls designed to create bigger, natural droplets. The residential lobby area of Burj Dubai is described as the meeting place for diverse cultures and nationalities - a metaphor of the diversity of global society. World Voices becomes a homage to societies diversity and is a celebration of life.

Dream 2009

In 2008 St Helens took part in Channel 4's The Big Art Project along with several other sites. The project culminated in the unveiling of Dream, a 20m sculpture located on the old Sutton Manor Colliery Site. St Helens retains strong cultural ties to the Coal Industry and has several monuments including the wrought iron gates of Sutton Manor Colliery, and the 1995 town centre installation by Thompson Dagnall known as The Landings, which depicts individuals working a coal seam and Arthur Fleischmann's Anderton Shearer monument, a piece of machinery first used at the Ravenhead Mine. The Council and local residents, including former miners from the Colliery, where involved in the consultation and commission process through which the Dream was selected. The plans involved a full landscaping of the surrounding area on land previously allowed to go wild after the closure of the pit.

The sculpture The work consists of an elongated white structure that stands 20 metres (66 ft) tall, weighing 500 tons. It has been cast 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 on the site. Sutton Manor Colliery closed in 1991 and it overlooks the M62 motorway. It cost nearly £1.9 million and it is hoped it will become as powerful a symbol in North West England as Antony Gormley's Angel of the North is in North East England. In 2011 Dream received funding by art and culture companies to have Dream lit up and to have a spotlight shining out the top of the head.

Construction Dream is built out of moulded and cast unique concrete shapes - 90 pieces in all contribute to over 14 tiers (54 individual elements for the head, each weighing 9 tonnes). Dolomite was utilised as a concrete aggregate in order to provide the brilliant white finish. Additionally titanium dioxide was added to the mix in order to provide a self-cleaning mechanism. The construction required the construction of individual moulds for each piece and took a total of 60 days to cast. The foundations of the sculpture extend 38m into the ground with 8 piles driven in to secure it. Location. (Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_(sculpture))

Dialogue 2009

Dialogue is a permanent installation at the Copperhill Mountain Lodge, Åre, Sweden. The sculpture features two glowing cast fibreglass heads. They are fitted with six lamps in each head that can be dimmed according to day and season. Words are visible in the women's faces –Irma and Nuria. There is a ‘conversation’ between the two women, eyes closed, as in an internal dialogue. Irma, the elderly, is from the Dominican Republic. She works as a maid in Barcelona. Nuria, the young woman, is the daughter of the family who runs Barcelona's best Chinese restaurant. The sculptures are custom made for Copperhill, cast in Barcelona, sandblasted. The surrounding stone is marble from southern Spain. The Spanish words that are ‘tattooed’ in the women's faces describe turmoil and stress - the opposite of what their serene faces are showing. The words on Irma’s face say Enfermedad (Disease), Hambre (Hunger) and Insomnia (Insomnia) – all of which plagues those forced to live in a prison. Nuria says Ansiedad (Worry), Panico (Panic) and Histeria (Hysteria) – which affect many in the modern world's stressed existence. In winter, the sculptures will shine like snow lamps, in the summer nights like lanterns – visible far out across the valley. With their light and image of intimate meetings, the sculptures can become symbols for Copperhill.

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 is an excellent example of Plensa’s mastery of his medium. It is a portrait of a young Chinese girl, Sho, whom the artist met in Barcelona where his studio is located. The undulating curves of the girl’s facial features and braided hair are emphasised, especially in profile, demonstrating the artist’s characteristic experiments with the interplay of large scale and intimacy in three-dimensional representations of the human form.

Sho was first exhibited at the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM) in Valencia, Spain, in the winter of 2007. It was the centerpiece of a mid-career retrospective exhibition of Plensa’s work and served as the cover illustration for the accompanying catalogue. The work then travelled to Chicago, where it was exhibited along the riverfront in the heart of downtown, and to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where it was included in a major exhibition at the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park through early January 2009. Conversations à Nice 2007

Conversations à Nice is a commission at Place Masséna, Côte d’Azur, in Nice, France. It features seven-resin statues sit quietly over 10 meters high and steel post. In the day they are white, however at night they glow and change colour to express the idea of communication between the different communities of today’s society. Each resin figure represents one of the seven continents The project is a metaphor for the relationship between the different communities that are part of today's society. The figures are lit from inside with lights kinetics. The seven works pass smoothly from one colour to another, establishing a dialogue between the figures themselves and with passers-by walking around the square. The arrangement of works follows the route of the tram and gives a new interpretation to the traveller in motion. Such as lighthouses on the coast, the figures appear to watch over the public, protect them, and without disturbing the vacuum of space, they invite them to look up and rediscovered the sky over the city.

Breathing 2005

Breathing is a sculpture situated on the roof of the Egton Wing of BBC Broadcasting House, in London, which takes its inspiration from the audio life of the building - home to the BBC's Audio & Music Division. It consists of a 10 metre (32 ft) high glass and steel column, with a torch-like, inverted spire shape, decorated with words. The words which are inscribed around the sculpture in a spiral of continuous text evoke the antithetical themes of speech and silence, life and death. At night the sculpture gently glows, then at 10pm every evening to coinciding with the broadcast of the BBC ten o'clock news. Breathing shines a beam of light into the sky for 30 minutes, which reaches up to 900m. It was officially unveiled on 16 June 2008 by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. It was commissioned and selected as a result of an international competition for the BBC's public art scheme. The shape of the sculpture is inspired by the spire of the adjoining All Souls Church, and the radio mast on the roof of Broadcasting House.

Poem

Breathing life turns and turns on the crystal glass breathing in our body silence is a voice, our voice silence is a body, our body life turns and turns on the crystal glass breathing in our body

I invite you to breathe I invite you to listen to the silence

By Jaume Plensa

Crown Fountain 2004

Crown Fountain is an interactive work of public art and video sculpture featured in Chicago's Millennium Park, which is located in the Loop community area. Designed by Catalan artist Jaume Plensa, 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 (15.2 m) tall, and they use light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to display digital videos on their inward faces. Construction and design of the Crown Fountain cost $17 million. Weather permitting, the water operates from May to October, intermittently cascading down the two towers and spouting through a nozzle on each tower's front face. Residents and critics have praised the fountain for its artistic and entertainment features. It highlights Plensa's themes of dualism, light, and water, extending the use of video technology from his prior works. Its use of water is unique among Chicago's many fountains, in that it promotes physical interaction between the public and the water. Both the fountain and Millennium Park are highly accessible because of their universal design. It is a popular subject for photographers and a common gathering place. While some of the videos displayed are of scenery, most attention has focused on its video clips of local residents; hundreds of Chicagoans visit the fountain hoping to see themselves appearing on one of the fountain's two screens. The fountain is a public play area and offers people an escape from summer heat, allowing children to frolic in the fountain's water.

Concept and design Grant Park, which is between Lake Michigan and the central business district, is commonly called ‘Chicago's Front Yard’. Its northwest corner had been Illinois Central rail yards and parking lots until 1997, when it was made available for development by the city as Millennium Park. Millennium Park was conceived in 1998 as the capstone of Grant Park, to celebrate the new millennium and to feature world-renowned architects, artists, designers, landscape architects, and urban planners. As of 2007, Millennium Park trails only Navy Pier as a Chicago tourist attraction. The fountain is centrally located in Chicago: it is east of Michigan Avenue and its Historic Michigan Boulevard District, north of Monroe Street and the Art Institute of Chicago; and south of Madison Street. Looking north from the fountain, viewers see some of the tallest buildings in the United States (Aon Center, Two Prudential Plaza, and One Prudential Plaza).

Selection of artist In December 1999, Lester Crown and his family agreed to sponsor a water feature in Millennium Park. Unlike other park feature sponsors, the Crowns acted independently of Millennium Park officials; they conducted independent surveys of water technologies, held their own informal design contest, and stayed active in the design and engineering of the project. The Crowns were open-minded about the choice of artist; wanting a modern work, they solicited proposals from a list of prospective artists and architects. Jaume Plensa researched the traditions and history of fountains and studied anthropomorphism in fountain imagery. Some of his early ideas for the project referenced Buckingham Fountain, but these were soon abandoned. His presentation to the Crown family started with a slide show of fountains from the Middle Ages through the 20th century. Plensa focused on the philosophical meanings associated with fountains, their history, use and art. His presentation included computer animation of facial expressions. The other finalists were Maya Lin, who presented a low-height horizontal form, and Robert Venturi, who presented a fountain that would have been 150 feet (46 m) tall. In January 2000, Plensa won the commission to design the fountain over Lin and Venturi. The installation is a video sculpture, commissioned to operate thirty years. Artistic design

Artistic design Prior to Crown Fountain, Plensa's dominant theme had been dualism, which he had expanded to artworks in which the viewers are outside, and the visible subjects of the art are inside containers and hollow spaces. In the 1990s, he completed several outdoor sculptures in which he explored the use of light (The Star of David, 1998 at Stockholm's Raoul Wallenberg Square, Bridge of Light, 1998 in Jerusalem), and LED technology, video, and computer design (Gläserne Seele & Mr. Net in Brandenburg, 1999–2000). In his public art, Plensa challenged himself to involve the viewer with his art, which led to his conception of the Crown Fountain. His objective was to create a socially relevant, interactive fountain for the 21st Century. Since water is the focus of a fountain, and since Chicago, and especially Millennium Park, is so greatly affected by the nearby water, Plensa sought to create an eternal water work to complement the local natural inspirations. Because of the climate of Chicago, Plensa had to create a fountain that remained vibrant when the water was inactive, so he relied on his experience with the theme of light and the use of video technology. Plensa explores dualism with Crown Fountain, where he has two randomly selected faces ‘conversing’ with each other. Plensa feels that by using faces, he can represent the diversity of the city both in ethnicity and in age. The artist intends to portray the sociocultural evolution of the city by updating the collection of images. Plensa feels that the challenge in the creation of successful work of public art is to integrate the viewer into an interactive relationship with the art. The fountain is known for encouraging its visitors to splash and slide in the reflecting pool, jostle for position under the water spout and place themselves under the cascade. This interactivity was to some degree accidental. Although the city planned for some interactivity, the transformation of the fountain into a water park for kids within hours of opening surprised Plensa. Now, when the National Weather Service issues summer heat advisories and the Governor of Illinois declares state office buildings as official daytime cooling centers, the national press points to Crown Fountain as a respite for inhabitants of the Chicago metropolitan area.

Video production Approximately 75 ethnic, social, and religious Chicago organisations were asked to provide candidates whose faces would be photographed for integration into the fountain. The subjects were chosen from local schools, churches and community groups, and filming began in 2001 at the downtown campus of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). The SAIC students filmed their subjects with a $100,000 high-definition HDW-F900 video camera. About 20 SAIC students took part in what became an informal master's course in public art for the project. Faculty from Columbia College Chicago was also involved in the production of the video. The high-definition equipment was used because of the scale of the project. Because the image proportions were like a movie screen with a width far exceeding its height, the camera was turned on its side during filming.

Each face appears on the sculpture for a total of 5 minutes using various parts of individual 80- second videos. A 40-second section is played at one-third speed forward and backward, running for a total of 4 minutes. Then, there is a subsequent segment, where the mouth is puckering, that is stretched to 15 seconds. This is followed by a section, in which the water appears to spout from the open mouth that is stretched to last for 30 seconds. Finally, there is a smile after the completion of the water spouting from the mouth that is slowed to extend for 15 seconds. Of the original 1,051 subjects filmed, 960 videos were determined to be usable for the project. Originally, the set of images was presumed to be the beginning of a work in progress, but as of 2009 no additional videos are planned. To achieve the effect in which water appears to be flowing from subjects' mouths, each video has a segment where the subject's lips are puckered, which is then timed to correspond to the spouting water, reminiscent of gargoyle fountains. Each face is cropped so that no hair and usually no ears are visible. Since there is no tripod designed for cameras turned on their sides, an adjustable barber/dentist's chair was used to minimize the need for the movement of the state- of-the-art camera during filming Nonetheless, in some case, digital manipulation was necessary to properly simulate puckering in the exact proper location on the video. Many of the faces had to be stretched in order to get the mouths properly positioned. Additionally, each video was color- corrected for brightness, contrast and color saturation. Both the playback equipment and the final videos had to be further adjusted to account for sunlight during viewing

Construction and engineering The Crown family, for whom the fountain is named, donated $10 million of the $17 million construction and design cost. The Goodman family, known for funding the Goodman Theatre, was also a large contributor; the entire $17 million cost was provided by private donations. The initial proposed cost for the fountain had been $15 million. The fountain's black granite reflecting pool measures 48 feet by 232 feet (15 m × 71 m) and has an approximate water depth of 0.25 inches (0.6 cm). It displays videos on two LED screens, each encapsulated in a glass brick tower measuring 50 feet by 23 feet by 16 feet (15.2 m × 7.0 m × 4.9 m). The firm designed a special stainless steel T-frame both to bear the load of the walls, which are 50 feet (15 m) high, and to withstand the lateral wind forces. The frame holds all the glass blocks and transfers the load to the base in a zigzag pattern. Rods measuring 0.5 inches (13 mm) in diameter anchor to the structure and project into the frame for lateral stability, while triangular corner brackets add support.

After several dozen glass manufacturing firms were interviewed, L. E. Smith Glass Company emerged as the company to produce 22,500 glass blocks near the upper limit of the size of press glass formed from hand-poured molten glass and cast iron molds. The process used sand and soda ash heated to a temperature of 2,600 °F (1,430 °C) and "gathered" with a large clay ball resembling a honey dipper. Rather than use a standard plunger to ensure the glass that sagged off the rod spread to the corners of the mold, they relied on gravity. The full mold was annealed (reheated in an oven to 1,100 °F (593 °C)) and cooled. Over the course of four months of production, about 350 blocks were produced per day.

The glass was custom-made at a factory in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, and was fitted into small sections of the frame. Each block is 5 inches by 10 inches by 2 inches (13 cm × 25 cm × 5.1 cm) with glass thin enough to avoid image distortion. On each block, one of the six faces is polished, and the other five surfaces are textured.

The fountain uses 11,000 imperial gallons (50,000 L) per hour, 97% of which is recycled back into the system. Getting the water The water nozzle to the spout took ingenuity. Although consideration was given to omitting a LED tile, it was determined that the images would then look as though they were each missing a tooth. Instead, one tile in each tower is recessed about 6 inches (15 cm) to allow the installation of 1 inch (2.5 cm) clear tubing for the water nozzle. The water regularly spills over the fountain and down the sides of the towers and intermittently spouts from the nozzle. Two essential custom fittings contribute to the artistic vision of the fountain: a custom glass block at the upper edge for guiding the water's descent while remaining unobtrusive, and a plastic nozzle LED lights can be seen behind the fitted to the stainless steel frame to control the rate of water flow front face and are absent from other faces. and reduce liability to the city for any injuries sustained by the fountain's interactive participants. The interactive participants are usually children playing in the stream from the water spout or under the cascade. The risk that the spouting water would knock people down made the design both a legal and a physical challenge.

The fountains use over one million LEDs. The inner surface of each tower uses 147 smaller screens with a total of 264,480 LED points (each with two red, one blue and two green LEDs). Plensa had used LED fixtures on previous projects. The LED structure is not supported as a single wall (which would be 50 feet (15 m) high), but rather as several segments that are noticeable as visible horizontal bands every few feet: these show where the LED equipment is supported. The heat generated is handled by fans that cool the air at the bottom, which then works its way through the chimney-like tower. Perceptibility was determined to be optimal with LED lights 2 inches (5.1 cm) behind the glass. LEDs were chosen because they were viewed as the lowest maintenance option of the possible color changing fixtures. LEDs fit into an electrical circuit, causing illumination by the movement of electrons in the semiconductor material and making a filament unnecessary, so the bulbs never burn out and do not get too hot. Fins were added to the screens to keep direct sunlight from hitting the LEDs. ColorBlast 12 LEDs fixtures are used to illuminate the tower structures and glass in an attempt to meet Plensa's objective that the towers have a light and translucent appearance, with their internal structures reflecting light from behind the glass surface. The electronics were designed to be adaptable to the time of day, weather and season and to meet the desired century-long longevity and dependability objectives set by the design team in response to the thirty-year directive.

Video sculpture

The front face of each tower is animated with a continuous, dynamic exhibit of lights and electronic images. Although the LED screens on the towers periodically display clips of landscapes such as waterfalls, most intriguing are the display of faces of Chicago residents. About 1,000 faces of Chicagoans are shown in a random rotation, the order determined using a Barco show controller. Each face is displayed for five minutes, with a brief period between each of these videos during which the sculpture is unlit. As a result, no more than 12 faces appear per hour during the summer. However, during the winter a version without the final one minute of puckering is shown, so the video segments then are only four minutes each. The video pattern also includes a three-minute water scene every half-hour and a 30-second fade-to-black every 15 minutes. If all the faces were shown consecutively, instead of randomly, they would each appear about once every eight days. The spouting water from the faces of the towers appears to be flowing from the displayed subject's mouth from a 6-inch (15 cm) nozzle located in the center of each interior face 12 feet (3.7 m) above the reflecting pool. Images are shown daily year-round, while the water feature only operates from May 1 to approximately October 31, weather permitting. The park is open to the public daily from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Each tower is illuminated from within on three sides by approximately 70 color-changing Color Kinetics LED lighting fixtures per tower, while the fourth side features opposing Barco LED display screens. At night, some of the videos are replaced by images of nature or solid colors. Also at night, the other three sides of the fountain display changing

Night view of south tower colors. The outer Color Kinetics surfaces randomly display the translucent glow of one of eight colors along with each of the inner opposing faces. As a video sculpture with a variety of cascade and water spout fountain modes, the sculpture is a fluid, dynamic evolving artwork.

(Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Fountain)

Blake in Gateshead 1996

Blake in Gateshead is a laser beam that on special occasions shines high into the night sky over the Baltic Centre of Contemporary Art, Gateshead, U.K. It was commissioned by the Metropolitan Borough Council Libraries and Arts, 1996. Whist walking over the near the Tyne Plensa began to think of Blake and has said he wanted to created a new bridge, a vertical bridge that takes the viewer towards another kind of landscape, above our heads and underneath our feet and maybe because it is too close or too far it is unattainable.

Opera and Theatre projects

2007

Bluebeard’s Castle by Béla Bartók Diary of one who Disappeared by Leos Janácek Opera Garnier, Paris, France Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona, Spain Opera House, Kobe / Tokyo, Japan

2003

The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Ruhr Triennale, Bochum, Germany Opera Bastille, Paris, France Teatro Real, Madrid, Spain

1999

The Damnation of Faust by Hector Berlioz Salzburg Summer Opera Festival, Salzburg, Austria Ruhr Triennale, Bochum, Germany

1997

The Martyrdom of Saint Sebatian by Claude Debussy Teatro dell’Opera, Rome, Italy

1996

La Atlántida by Manuel de Falla. Granada Summer Festival, Granada, Spain

Bluebeard’s Castle by Béla Bartók, 2007

The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 2003

The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 2003

The Damnation of Faust by Hector Berlioz, 1999 Future public projects

Echo 2011

Echo is Plensa’s first public project in New York, USA. The sculpture, located in Madison Square Park, is a monument to everyday people Creatively inspired by the presence of the 9-year old daughter of a restaurant proprietor near Plensa’s home in Barcelona, the 44-feet tall sculpture comprised of white fiberglass resin depicts the face of this inspiring young girl in a dream state from the neck, up. Plensa’s sculpture, made from marble gel- coated fiberglass-reinforced plastic, will be sited on the central Oval Lawn of Madison Square Park. Its monumental size and vertical orientation reflect the architecture surrounding the park, while the visage of the sculptor’s subject exudes a welcoming tranquility perfectly suited to this cherished urban oasis. Drawing inspiration from the presence of a real person in real time, Plensa’s sculpture also references the myth of the Greek nymph Echo. According to Greek mythology, Echo was a nymph, who loved her own voice until it was later taken. From that point forward the legend tells of Echo being able to utter the thoughts of others but not her own. Jaume Plensa’s Echo plays on the tale of this Greek myth, creating a sculpture of massive scale drawing parallels to the Greek Echo’s origins as a mountain nymph. The reference is carried further by the artist’s decision to depict the young 9-year old girl’s face in a dream state, translating this massive sculptural portrait into a physical monument of all the voices and thoughts of others internalised by Madison Square Park as by the nymph in the myth of Echo.

Together 2012

The new sculpture will be suspended in the central aerial space within Chichester Cathedral, West Sussex, UK. The form of the sculpture is the hand of the resurrected Christ, raised in the sign of blessing. A ‘cloud’ of letters form the hand, maintaining transparency and enabling the viewer to see directly through the sculpture. The letters composing the hand are derived from eight alphabets: Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, and Chinese. Chichester Cathedral has an international reputation as a bold patron of contemporary art within an ancient setting; this artwork will revitalise that tradition. The commission was launched in 2009, and was timed to mark the centenary of Walter Hussey (1909-1985) who was Dean of Chichester from 1955 to 1977. Referred to by the art historian Kenneth Clark as ‘the last great patron of art in the Church of England’. Alphabets are a perfect metaphor for the different origins, cultures and backgrounds that comprise humanity, which is the fundamental idea behind Together, and is in harmony with Chichester’s role as a world Cathedral.’ The hand raised in blessing is a familiar motif to be found throughout the Cathedral, from the 12th century Lazarus Reliefs to a detail within a Victorian stained glass window. Jaume Plensa’s aspiration for Together is that it should be perfectly integrated into the architecture of the Cathedral, emphasising the powerful spirituality of the space. The material of the three dimensional sculpture will be a matt finish stainless steel, which will subtly reflect the light, and is an appropriate material for its strength, durability and lightness. The size of the sculpture will be approximately 2.5 – 3m high, the exact scale to be determined following a scale model installed in the space.

Quotes by Jaume Plensa

“As a sculptor, I basically work in the terrain of ideas, not with material of forms, although each idea obviously demands it material and form, but these are not the main concerns” (Jaume Plensa in A Conversation with Jaume Plensa, 1999, quoted in Jaume Plensa: Chaos-Saliva, 136)

“Over time, the work becomes a part of each person’s personal memory and likewise exists as part of the collective.” (Jaume Plensa in Selected Works 1995-1999, 1999)

“For me, a sculptor uses physical material to express abstract ideas.” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

“I’m obsessed with the idea that art itself is something in-between. It has to take up and assimilate a wide range of influences, experiences, and strengths and make a whole out of them.” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

“As an artist you have to speak indirectly, you have to project another world that allows you to know your own world better. It is best if you can put yourself outside all the customary relationships and ties. Thus you will see and feel much more sharply.” (Jaume Plensa in Jaume Plensa, Love Sounds, 1999, 6)

“The development of a kind of collective memory is one of the finest reasons for being an artist. The rest doesn’t matter.” (Jaume Plensa in Jaume Plensa, Love Sounds, 1999, 8)

“I’m not a conceptual artist and I never have been: I’m a very physical artist, I need to touch things, but ideas can be touched too”. (Jaume Plensa in Speech and Matter, Arts Magazine, AÑO 3 –Nº 7, July – September, 2010)

“Very early on I knew that sculpture gave me everything” (Jaume Plensa in Jaume Plensa 2008, 12)

“My work follows this rule: the development of independent cells that slowly continue to associate with one another to eventually arrive at the construction of one unique, single body.” (Jaume Plensa in “Conversation,” Jaume Plensa, 2007, 60)

“For me, art is nothing more than a body sound. Our bodies produce vibrations, and I view art as one of these vibrations. It belongs to me: it’s a part of me. Without art, I’m not imaginable. I never took care to become a good artist, but I always took care to become a good person. I don’t care about art as a problem of shapes. Art is a consequence. It’s the breath of my experience. It helps people understand life. It helps people to grow up. But I’m not good at explaining what art is or should be. If I were able to do so, I probably could not continue to be an artist any longer. “ (Jaume Plensa, Sculpture in Public Part II, the 21st International Sculpture Conference, 2008)

“Since I began doing sculpture I made up my mind to break with the centrality of the work of sculpture, with the totemic idea implicit in it. To replace that centrality with something far more interesting: the ungraspable. To give a physical content to that concept and renounce form as gesture” (Jaume Plensa in Jaume Plensa, Institut Valencià d’ Art Modern, Valencia, 2007, 22)

“…in fact it is the sculptor who has regained his public freedom; he does not need to decorate or commemorate any more, he can talk about sculpture again. That means he can ask a small question, write a very discreet little question mark on the wall: I think that is the real function nowadays” (Jaume Plensa in Jaume Plensa, Institut Valencià d’ Art Modern, Valencia, 2007, 22)

Public works Crown Fountain

“For over twenty-five years I have exhibited in both galleries and museums, and designed opera sets and public sculpture, and so it was exhilarating to face the new challenges a concept for a fountain in a city such as Chicago, bearing in mind that the Crown Fountain was to be my first major public project in the United States” (Jaume Plensa in The Crown Fountain, 2008, 13)

“I am fortunate enough to have been invited to install my works in places as diverse as England, Japan, Korea, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Israel. These experiences have contributed to my ever-growing interest in, and great respect for, the concept that we call ‘the public space,’ whether it is to be found in an urban context or in a more natural environment” (Jaume Plensa in The Crown Fountain, 2008, 13)

“I have learned to value intangible characteristics, subtle sensation, and ‘time’ – that most ephemeral of elements – which invisibly envelop the physical and architectural aspects of spaces. These are the traits that confer upon the work its true personality” (Jaume Plensa in The Crown Fountain, 2008, 14)

“I have experienced the energy of the people who live with my works. I have grown by learning from their reactions to beauty, from their endeavours to understand and appreciate the unknown, and from their determination to participate fully in the development of the works” (Jaume Plensa in The Crown Fountain, 2008, 14)

“My aim was to emphasise and expand upon the poetic, sensorial, and social aspects of my own experience of the public space. I wanted to generate an interactive and multidisciplinary relationship with the city and to expose the souls of its inhabitants by creating an archive of its people, as well as to provide a link connecting Chicago with the rest of the world” (Jaume Plensa in The Crown Fountain, 2008, 14)

“I wanted to produce a project for the twenty-first century based on the concept of the fountain in the great classical tradition, but one that would create a bridge to the future at the same time.” (Jaume Plensa in The Crown Fountain, 2008, 14)

“I wanted to put the city’s inhabitants once more at centre stage, a position I felt they had lost in recent years. I wanted to bring them out of anonymity by incorporating them fully into the process of the work” (Jaume Plensa in The Crown Fountain, 2008, 14)

“I wanted to build a space for silent reflection amidst the natural sound of falling water, a place where people, whether young or old, could be themselves; a place to be enjoyed. I wanted to create a living work, which, like the city, would perpetually transform itself” (Jaume Plensa in The Crown Fountain, 2008, 13)

“Restoring the concepts of water and the fountain to the public space, and turning them into a new experience for all the senses, took me back to the origins of the tradition: to the small springs in the mountains, to the great rivers in the plains, to the dark oceans. From the damp silence of Japanese fountains to the sunlit fountains in the Mediterranean. From the murmuring of medieval gargoyles to the Italian fountains of the Renaissance. From the Iguacu Falls to the fountains by Luis Barragan. From Niagra Falls to the Trocadero and Antoni Gaudi” (Jaume Plensa in The Crown Fountain, 2008, 16)

“I wanted the towers to be like transparent houses that embody the true notion of community. I wanted to embody the idea of communication and social aspects of our lives as individuals. They suggest the opening of our homes: a place where we can shelter and protect the souls of others as if they were our own. I wanted them to shatter the barriers that separate us, to help us share our experiences through light and transparency” (Jaume Plensa in The Crown Fountain, 2008, 16)

“One of the great traditions in fountains throughout history, gargoyles were the faces of mythological beings sculpted in stone or bronze, and through their open mouths flowed the water of life. The Crown Fountain draws on this tradtion, using the faces of the people of Chicago as modern adaptations of the gargoyle.” (Jaume Plensa in The Crown Fountain, 2008, 17)

“Water flows through their mouths as a symbol of life. These faces made sacred and majestic through their grand scale and prominence, offer a mythical significance to our daily lives and pay tribute to the people who, through their anonymity, give their energy as a gift to the community” (Jaume Plensa in The Crown Fountain, 2008, 17)

“At the same time, however, fountains have been used in all cultures as a reference to nature in our everyday domestic and urban setting. The fountain is an ever-present reminder of our roots in nature” (Jaume Plensa in The Crown Fountain, 2008, 17)

"When we took the fence away the night before the opening, it just sucked people in—I couldn't believe it, I never expected that beautiful response from people— that they would adopt the fountain as part of their lives, especially kids. The municipality had been a little concerned that it would be too intellectual and too much technology for the public space, but it's probably the most visceral piece I ever did in my life. I improved a lot in that project." (Jaume Plensa in Man of a Thousand Faces, ARTnews online: March 2010)

"I had never had as strong a relationship with people as I had in Chicago, filming 1,000 faces, one after another," (Jaume Plensa in Man of a Thousand Faces, ARTnews online: March 2010)

“In Chicago, where I was asked to take part in a competition, I wanted my work to represent an archive of the city’s inhabitants” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

“In a way, the faces are like a mosaic representing the different cultures and ancestries of the city’s people.” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

“With Crown Fountain, I attempted to create a place of beauty where people could meet, talk, and meditate. I wanted it to be a modern version of the traditional fountain. When water streams out of the mouths, one is reminded of the gargoyle, which is an old deity of life and a popular motif in the history of fountains. The flowing of water, images, and light represents permanent change and transformation. I think that this is the first time people did not stand in front of a fountain watching the water, but instead stood in the middle of it, becoming a part of it. They experience the water like they experience the images. They are so close to them that they distinctly see the red, blue, and green dots that constitute the images of the 50-foot-high faces” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

“The beauty of the work consists of the fact that in the midst of this vast emptiness, the two towers produce enormous tension. I think that people go there in order to feel this magnetism. It’s a great pleasure for me to know that Chicagoans have really integrated Crown Fountain into their lives.” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

Breathing

“The BBC commissioned it for a new building in Regent Street, where it is visible from all sides. It is accompanied by a text on silence. I reverse things. The people at the BBC live from their talking all the time, and I’m confronting them with a mode of existence praising silence. They understood this very well and were very excited about the idea. At night, a powerful beam of white light radiates out of the work into the sky.” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

“The BBC piece will also count among my vertical bridges connecting heaven and hell. Obviously, this is reminiscent of Blake.” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

Gongs

“The specific aspect of all these works is the material removed during the engraving process. It’s like creating sculptures out of the negative, opening up quite a new space as an artist.” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

Early work

“When I did Wonderland I, I was in Great Britain working on a project and an exhibition for the Henry Moore Sculpture Trust. I was reading Alice in Wonderland at the time and thinking about someone who could shrink her body to pass through small doors. Reading Carroll´s book is like reading a book on sculpture. I recall a conversation I once had with Anthony Caro, who told me: “Jaume, there are three major issues in sculpture—scale, scale, and scale!” “Yes,” I replied, “but I disagree completely. For me, the most important issue is time.” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

“Time appears in the doors of Wonderland in the way your image is reflected, as in a mirror. When you stand in front of a door, the most important thing is that you are thinking about the other side, and what you are thinking depends on how old you are and what you have experienced in your life.” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

“Wonderland I is a very personal piece. When I was looking for information on doors, I came across a dictionary definition that said: “Door: the most important part of a house.” I don’t think that this is based on architecture, but because there’s a decision connected to it: you have to decide whether and when to cross the threshold. That was the idea behind my work. When I produced Wonderland I, I was 38 years old. And because I decided to dedicate it to myself, I gave it 38 doors” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

Cells, containers and cabins

"I always thought that silence is only a dream. Our body is heavy and noisy, full of life, finite life. The cabins are meditation cells. And at the same time there is something cannibalistic about them…" (Jaume Plensa in Galeria Carles Taché, 1989, no page number, interview by Gloria Moure)

(There are houses made of polyester such as Bedroom (1995) and houses with texts such as Winter Kept Us Warm (1998), Scholars of War (1999), and Komm mit! Komm mit! (1999). Then there are the three houses made of brass, which are meant to be self-portraits (1997), as well as the four houses with body sounds, Love Sounds (1998))

“A house is a place to be. The idea of a home is more essential for me than the idea of a house. That’s the most important point for me. For me, a home is not necessarily a building. It can be the wife you love, the book you are reading, the music you like, or the nature you feel well with. It’s a general concept. It’s probably for this reason that people feel comfortable with my works regardless of where I show them” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

Houses as self-portraits

“They reveal something about me, my attitude toward humankind and the world. It’s the idea of body and soul. A house is a body in the sense of it being a place to be. And when someone enters one of my houses, he or she furnishes them with a soul. The piece is not complete until someone enters it.” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

Materials

“The glass bricks, like transparent stones, call to mind the great tradition of the Sefer Yetzirah, or the Book of Creation, that tells of hoe Yahweh created the world: ‘Yahweh engraved, modelled, weighed, and combined the twenty-two basic letters on a wheel, as if they were walls… How did he combine and arrange them? Aleph with all the Aleph, Beth with all the Beths…and he found that every creature and everything said comes from a single name…Two stones build two houses. Three stones build six houses. Four stones build twenty-four houses. Five stones build one hundred and twenty-two houses. Six stones build seven hundred and twenty houses. Seven stones build five thousand and forty houses. Thereafter, go away and think about everything that the mouth cannot say and ear cannot ear’” (Jaume Plensa in The Crown Fountain, 2008, 16)

“The idea of creating something large out of small elements, much the same way that cells joins together to form a complex body.” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

“In the beginning I used forged steel and cast iron, adopting an industrial technique for my sculptures. I was dreaming about the moment when the mountains were formed, the moment when everything was liquid and hot and suddenly started to cool, solidify, and take shape. For me, there’s a mythical element in the way fire transforms things into liquid. Something solid becomes liquid and then becomes an object again.” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

“I had an experience in the foundry. I clearly remember it. I used to work a lot with cast iron. So there is was, standing in the foundry, looking at the liquid iron and it seemed to be made only of burning, flowing light. Completely weightless. From then on I started working with light” (Jaume Plensa in Love Sounds, 1999, 7)

Sculpture and Art

“ Art is a consequence…it helps people understand life…but I am not good at explaining what art is or should be…every definition of an artist with regard to art and his or her role as an artist is right, subjectively right…Combining all the different experiences and definitions would probably sum up what art is and what an artist is. There is no such thing as just one single definition” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

“What I have always tried to depict in my work is a sculpture of the memory…you can find fresh footprints or fossils in mud and the emotional reactions to the two footprints are so different and unequal that there is not comparison. Sculpture, my sculpture at least has a tendency towards fossilised footprints rather than fresh footprints. Sculpture has the same constant objective: the totem, and totems are something we have in our inmost being since time immemorial; symbols, all this constitutes shared memories, and sculpture is rather like some marvellous sublime material in which one can work on this space in a collective memory.” (Jaume Plensa in Galeria Carles Taché, 1989, no page number, interview by Gloria Moure)

“As I understand sculpture it is the union of something physical with an abstract idea, the union of thought and matter” (Jaume Plensa in Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2008, back cover)

“Art can provide keys and messages to change your life permanently – it can make your eyes open” (Jaume Plensa in Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2008, 7)

“Since I began doing sculpture I made up my mind to break with the centrality of the work of sculpture, with the totemic idea implicit in it. To replace that centrality with something far more interesting: the ungraspable. To give a physical content to that concept and renounce form as gesture” (Jaume Plensa in Jose de los Santos Aunonn, Conversation with Jaume Plensa, 2001, no page number)

“Poetry is not the exclusive property of the poets. There are other aspects that explain my approach to sculpture. I'm very physical. My relationship with the sculpture is a sensitive approach.” (Jaume Plensa in el cultural.es, 2000, online)

"The sculpture is not just a problem of scale, materials, and so on. For me, sculpture is a link, a bridge. In sculpture, there are guidelines and these guidelines will relate to the impossible, with abstraction, so far away from the tactile and material, but through the physical, and this is a wonderful contradiction” (Jaume Plensa in el cultural.es, 2000, online)

People

“Everybody is the same, we are all a little universe unto ourselves” (Jaume Plensa in Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2008, 10)

“Only a few people can read what is tattooed onto your skin, a friend, or a lover, perhaps. This is when you are moved, enabling you at last to share with others what is legible to you yourself. You live in loneliness with your text, with your tattoo” (Jaume Plensa in Une âme, deux corps... trois ombres, 2006, 32)

Body

“If you think about material, for example, you don’t necessarily have to think about weight, you can instead think about energy. It is similar with the body. Everyone has a certain aura, and you can try to fill up space with this energy instead of filling it up with the body. In my work, I like to transform this energy into an object. Bodies appear and vanish and are subject to a process of permanent change. They acquire biographies and memories. I’m interested in this process— not as narrative, but as energy. I’m less interested in the individual than in the collective. Because I’m trying to proceed to the origin— not of shape, but of attitude—I regard myself as a classical sculptor.” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

“Every human being is a “place“. Every woman, every man, every child, every old person are themselves a living space which moves and unfolds; a “place“ in the sense of time, geography, volume and colour. Whole cities built out of bodies that open and shut like doors. Flashing lights. Each time a human being dies, a house shuts down and a “place“ is lost. My work is its remembrance. The freeze frame of all those bodies, which in their unfolding, disappear at lightning speed. My work is their volume” (Jaume Plensa in Jaume Plensa conversation, 2002, 8)

Public projects

"It's not just a geographic area but a place where people do something just by passing through or relaxing or eating. Public spaces are an expansion of your body, your home. They are another circle." (Jaume Plensa in Man of a Thousand Faces, ARTnews online: March 2010)

“Public space has its own laws and shouldn’t be confused with a gallery or a museum. Public space is owned by a city’s inhabitants, and the artist should keep this in mind. I have always refused to use public space as a site to install objects that interrupt people’s customary movement. I try to produce something that invites them to come.” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 42)

Other Materials/elements

Silence

“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)

Light and sound

“While working in the foundry with cast iron, I was fascinated by the light of the glowing red substance. When iron is molten it is pure light. It completely loses its weight. La Neige Rouge works with light the exact colour of the molten iron when it comes out of the oven. For the first time, I also added sound to a work—the sound of electricity amplified by the conical shapes of the work itself. People were struck by the aggressiveness of the light and sound of this piece.” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

Influences

Literature

“As I understand sculpture it is the union of something physical with an abstract idea, the union of thought and matter. I find this in the great images of literature too” (Jaume Plensa in Love Sounds, 1999, 8)

"I started with the idea of being a painter, but it is likely that my fascination with the writing took me to the sculpture. In principle, the painting seems to relate to the act of writing, but from my point of view, poetry is closer to sculpture” (Jaume Plensa in el cultural.es, 2000, online)

“Books were important, but not in the way they may be for a conceptual artist. I loved the physical aspect of text. I remember leafing through books and being puzzled that while I was looking at one page, the previous page had already disappeared although it had just become part of me. I dreamed about transforming letters into something physical.” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

“I make elements of language into shapes, but on no account do I aim to make this conceptual, I do it only at optical level.” (Jaume Plensa in Galeria Carles Taché, 1989, no page number, interview by Gloria Moure)

“You are familiar with my fascination with texts and the importance I give to the written word, in its most organic sense, due to its similarity with the body, with the way the human being grows and expands. One simple letter is like a cell charged with memory. It may seem, a priori, that they can have nothing in common with each other in view of the human personality and a notable differentiation in shape, but this tiny letter in association with others starts to form words, and these in association with others give rise to texts, which in association with others proffer ideas, and these in further associations give shape to the thought that nourishes cultures and religions, traditions and so on… In short, the whole world! This is the idea of the Even Shetia, or foundational stone, around which the temple was built, around the temple the city, around the city the country, from the country to the world, the world to the universe, and so on and on… It’s the idea of expansion from the smallest of things, from the association of diverse elements for the purpose of constructing a more complex body. A complex body like ours formed of eyes, fingers, ears, hair, feet, arms, lungs, heart, and so on and so forth… Elements that when compared to each other do not appear to have any relationship to one another, but in association do in fact perfectly articulate one single organization: the body. (Jaume Plensa in “Conversation,” Jaume Plensa, Valencia: IVAM Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, 2007, 60)

“Why should the page of a book be opaque if when I pass to the other page my life is completely different thanks to the experience of reading it?” (Jaume Plensa in an interview with Jed Morse, 2009, cited in Genus and Species. Jed Morse, 2010, 44)

Language

“The physical aspect of language fascinates me. In my last gallery show in London, I had words like “day” and “night,” “sweet” and “sour” engraved into two metal plates, which I connected to a scale. As the letters were incised into the metal, the weight of the plates changed and the scale’s dishes went up or down accordingly. In this work, the weight is the absence of the word.” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine 2006)

“It is this obsession with the word as a space where we find ourselves and share our memory, our little fragment of memory” (Jaume Plensa in a transcription of a unpublished taped conversation with the author 1997, for context see Willaim Jeffet: 1998, 61-73)

Childhood

“You know, for years I wanted to become a doctor. I loved the body. In fact, I was obsessed by it. I had numerous medical books, which stimulated my imagination. But it was more a fantastic than a scientific interest. In the 18th century, people did wonderful etchings of the body, about the fluids inside and how the muscles worked. Later, I dreamed about becoming a writer. I even imagined myself as a musician. I wanted to be everything and everybody. Because I don’t have the courage to be just one—that would be too difficult for me—art has probably allowed me to pursue all these aspirations” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

“In my works, words and letters are lent weight and volume. In this way they endure and don’t vanish. You know that I work with the opera. Everything from my childhood re-appears in my art—the music, the books, the body. All of these elements are the essence of my work today.” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

Shakespeare

“Sleep No More is a very important work because it represents the first time I used text. An excerpt from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. I’ve always thought that Macbeth provides the best definition of what a sculptor can be. For me, a sculptor uses physical material to express abstract ideas. The moment that Macbeth kills the king he destroys his own ability to sleep. The act is an expression of a precious paradox: Macbeth touches a body, which he kills, and at the same time he kills something untouchable. So I used this sentence in Sleep No More, casting it in iron to fix this fragile idea. It was a very important moment in my artistic career.” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

Blake

“Blake became very important for me after I became familiar with his Proverbs of Hell. They are a brilliant combination of high culture and low, of tradition and progress, matter and spirit, body and soul. And I feel close to Blake because he, too, was born midcentury: Blake in the middle of the 18th century, while I was born in the middle of the 20th. Thus we both function as bridges between different times, forces, and energies. Besides, I’m obsessed with the idea that art itself is something in-between. It has to take up and assimilate a wide range of influences, experiences, and strengths and make a whole out of them.” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

“Blake became very important to me after I became familiar with his Proverbs of Hell. They are a brilliant combination of high culture and low, of tradition and progress, matter and spirit, body and soul. And I feel close to Blake because he too, was born mid-century: Blake in the middle of the 18th century, while I was born in the middle of the 20th. Thus we both function as bridges between different times, forces, and energies.” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

“I love his modernity. There are so many parallels to our time. He too grew up in difficult times and lived through the end of a century two hundred years ago. He too was a loner without the help of schools, ideologies and parties. I feel very close to him” (Jaume Plensa in Love Sounds, 1999, 8)

“I appreciate his poetry in which he artfully combines popular and elaborate elements and where he develops a convincing philosophical pragmatism.” (Jaume Plensa in Love Sounds, 1999, 8)

Poetry

“I think that in order to conceive words and letters as sculptures I had to be influenced by another poet, Rabelais. In one of his books, he tells a wonderful story: Gargantua is at sea with his men, and suddenly they hear strange sounds and voices in the air. It’s very cold, and the words and sentences freeze and fall down as objects onto the ship. Later, it becomes warm again and they all melt away. The remaining drops look like diamonds, and the men ask Gargantua if he might sell them what remains of the voices. He responds by telling them that lawyers sell voices, but that he could only sell them silence, which is much more expensive. The physical aspect of language fascinates me. In my last gallery show in London, I had words like “day” and “night,” “sweet” and “sour” engraved into two metal plates, which I connected to a scale. As the letters were incised into the metal, the weight of the plates changed and the scale’s dishes went up or down accordingly. In this work, the weight is the absence of the word.” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

Opera

“I think that working for the opera is a natural extension of my work in space. I described how beautiful it is for me to see my work alive, with people using it. This is a basic condition on stage. What you create for the stage is used by other people. What attracts me to the stage, too, is that the work at an opera is an amazing combination of different energies and knowledge. You have the author, the director, the composer, the singers and dancers, the conductor. I love the opera: it was born from the idea of creating a “total art,” an idea that still fascinates me.” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

“The best thing about opera is its ephemerality. It exists only for the transitory moments of its representations. It is born and it disappears. Thus it’s like a parable of life. I like the idea of the permanence of my works in public spaces, but I also like this concept of ephemerality.” (Jaume Plensa in Transforming Energy, Sculpture Magazine, March 2006, 38-45)

Light art

Light art is a form of visual art where main media of expression is light. Light has been used for architectural aesthetical effects throughout human history. However, the modern concept of light art emerged with the development of artificial light sources and experimenting modern art. Examples of light art include works by Dan Flavin, Olafur Eliasson, James Turrell, Waltraut Cooper, Aleksandra Stratimirovic, Austine Wood Comarow, Tim White- Sobieski and many others.

History

One of the first artistic uses of light is the way in which stained glass can be used to colour transmitted light, examples of this goes back to the 4th century. Most prominently seen in churches and mosques with elaborate stained glass windows. Another use of light in art is in shadow puppetry, where projections of shadows from puppets can be used to create the Olafur Eliassons The Weather Project illusion of moving images. A form of shadow puppetry is described at Tate Modern, London, 2003. as early as 380 BC by Plato in the Allegory of the cave. All visual art of cause use light in some form, but in modern times photography and motion pictures, use of light is especially important. However, with the invention of electrical artificial light, the possibilities were expanded and many artists began using the light as the main form of expression instead of just a vehicle for other forms of art.

Examples

As an example artist Austine Wood Comarow works with pure polarised light passing through birefringent materials to create interactive and morphing images. This art form uses no pigments whatsoever, deriving prismatic colors purely from birefringence. Detail of a 13th century window from Also included in the light art genre is the so-called light graffiti Chartres Cathedral in France including projection onto buildings, arrangement of lighted windows in buildings and painting with hand-held lights onto film using time exposure. A unique project for light art can be found in front of the Osram headquarter in Munich, Germany: Seven LED stelae form as a plattform for altering art projects (involving video artists such as Diana Thater and Björn Melhus, film makers such as Harun Farocki or media artists such as Art+Com.

Light sculpture

Light sculpture is an intermedia and time-based art form in which sculpture or any kind of art object produces light, or the reverse (in the sense that light is manipulated in such a way as to create a sculptural as opposed to temporal form or mass). Most often light sculpture artists were primarily either visual artists or composers, not having started out directly making light sculpture. László Moholy-Nagy (1895– 1946), a member of the Bauhaus, and influenced by constructivism is regarded as one of the fathers of Light art. Light and moving sculpture are the components of his Light- László Moholy-Nagy, Light-Space- Space Modulator (1922–30), One of the first light art Modulator, 1930 pieces which also combines kinetic art. Light sculpture is sometimes site-specific.

(Taken from Wikipedia)

Bibliography

Genus and Species. Jed Morse, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas, 2010

L’Âme des Mots. Jean-Louis Andral, Olivier Kaeppelin and Jaume Plensa, Mussée Picasso, Antibes, France, 2010

Jaume Plensa, Nomade. Daniel Abadie and Jean Louis Andral, Musée Picasso and Managements of Museums de la Ville d’Antibes, France, 2008

Jaume Plensa. Joseph Antenucci Becherer, Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2008

Jaume Plensa. The Crown Fountain, Keith Patrick, Hatje Cantz, 2008

Jaume Plensa. Save our Souls, Albion Gallery, London, 2007

Jaume Plensa. William Jeffett and Gilbert Perlein, Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Valencia, 2007

Jaume Plensa. Song of Songs. Albion Gallery, London, 2007

Jaume Plensa. Sinónimos. Javier Arnaldo, Félix Duque y Ángel Gabilondo, Círculo De Bellas Artes, Madrid, 2007

Jaume Plensa. I in his eyes as one that found peace. Michael Stoeber 2005, Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago, 2006

Jaume Plensa. Jerusalem. Pere A. Serra, Marie-Claire Uberquoi and Carsten Ahrens, Es Baluard, Palma de Mallorca, 2006

Jaume Plensa: une âme, deux corps... trois ombres, Jean Frémon, Doris Von Drathen, Galerie Lelong, 2006

Complete Theatre Of William Shakespeare. Illustrated by Jaume Plensa. Ed. Galaxia Gutenberg- Círculo de Lectores, Barcelona, Spain 2006

Jaume Plensa. Montse Badia, Bruno Corà, Jacques Terrasa, Oscar Wilde, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Málaga, 2005

Jaume Plensa. Glückauf?, text by Christoph Brockhaus, Rolf Lauter, Gottlieb Leinz, Stiftung Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, 2005

Jaume Plensa: Thirteen Doubts, Achim Sommer, Kulturzentrum Englische Kirche, Galerie Scheffel, 2005

Jaume Plensa. Opera, Teatro y amigos, text by Carsten Ahrens, Juan Ángel Vela del Campo, Massimo Luconi, Fernando Maquieira Fundación ICO, Madrid, 2005

Jaume Plensa Silent Noise, text by J.M. Bonet, Kathy Cottong, Laura Coyle, Doris Von Drathen, Ed. Ministerio De Asuntos Exteriores / Dirección General de Relaciones Culturales y Científicas / Sociedad Estatal Para la Acción Cultural Exterior SEACEX, Madrid 2004

Jaume Plensa Fiumi e cenere, text by José Jiménez, Marco Pierini, Edizione Gli Ori, Siena-Prato 2004 Il Suono del sangue parla la stessa lingua, interview by Lorenzo Benedetti, Volume!, Roma 2004

Jaume Plensa - Livres, estampes et multiples sur papier: Books, prints and Multiples on paper. 1978-2003, text by Caroline Joubert, Fernando Gómez Aguilera, Jaume Plensa, Fundación César Manrique / Institut Valencià d'Art Modern / Musée des Beaux Arts de Caen 2004

Jaume Plensa, text by Mario Mauroner, Galerie Mario Mauroner Contemporary Art. Academia Galerie und Verlags Gesellschaft m.b.H & Co KG. Salzburg 2004

Jaume Plensa: Silent Noise, text by Juan Manuel Bonet, Kathy Cottong, Laura Coyle, Doris Von Drathen, The Arts Club of Chicago, Chicago 2003

Jaume Plensa, text by Carsten Ahrens, José Jiménez, Robert Hopper, Dr. Stefan von Senger, Keith Patrick, Susan Crown and Jaume Plensa, Ediciones Poligrafa, Barcelona 2003.

Jaume Plensa, Conversations, text by Gottlieb Heinz Jaume Plensa, Edition Scheffel, Bad Homburg, 2002

Jaume Plensa, text by Oriol Pi de Cabanyes, Jean-Pierre Van Tieghem, Jaume Plensa, Fondation Européenne Pour la Sculpture, Bruxelles, Generalitat de Catalunya, Barcelona 2002

Jaume Plensa, Wispern, text by Carsten Ahrens, Biel Amer, Alicia Chillida, Jaume Plensa, Església de Sant Domingo, Pollença, Mallorca Ajuntament de Pollença 2002

Jaume Plensa, Europa, text and interview by Mª José de los Santos, Galeria Toni Tàpies, Barcelona 2001

Jaume Plensa, Close Up, text by Keith Patrick, New Moment – Mestna Galerija, Ljubljana 2001

Jaume Plensa – “Gläserne Seele”: Mr Net in Brandenburg – Generation_0, text by Stefan von Senger, Wolfgang Fürnib and Jaume Plensa, Ministeriums für Wirtschaft, Land Brandenburg, zur EXPO 2000, q-bus Mediatektur GmbH 2001

Jaume Plensa: Chaos – Saliva, text by Jaume Plensa, Carsten Ahrens, José Jiménez, Barbara Catoir, Doris von Drathen, Sune Nordgren and an interview by Alicia Chillida; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Palacio de Velázquez, Madrid 2000

Jaume Plensa 360º, text by Antonio Garrido Moraga, Alfredo Taján, Jesús Aguado, Jaume Plensa, Museo Municipal De Málaga, Málaga 2000

One thought fills immensity, Jaume Plensa, text by Mario Mauroner, Galerie Academia, Salzburg 2000

Jaume Plensa – Nir Alon. Passage International, text by Nira Itzhaki, Lóránd Hegyi, Meir Agassi, Chelouche Gallery for Comtemporary Art, Tel Aviv 2000

Jaume Plensa / Selected Works 1995-1999, text by Javier Aiguabella, Tamada Projects Corporation, Tokyo 1999

Jaume Plensa - Wanderers Nachtlied, text by Lóránd Hegyi, Daniel Abadie, Bruno Corá, Rosa Olivares, interview by Daniéle Perrier, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Palais Liechtenstein, Vienna 1999

Jaume Plensa - Love Sounds, text by Carsten Ahrens, interview by Michael Stoeber, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover 1999

Jaume Plensa, text by Carlos Martínez Gorriarán, Galería Altxerri, San Sebastián, 1999

Jaume Plensa, excerpt of interview by Yves Lecointre – 1997, Sala Robayera. Ayuntamiento de Miengo, Miengo, 1999

Jaume Plensa, text by Bernardo Pinto de Alameida, Galeria Fernando Santos, Porto, 1999

Wie ein Hauch, text by Reiner Maria Rilke, Galerie Volker Diehl, Berlin, 1998

Dallas?...Caracas?, text by William Jefett, Rick Brettel und Tulio Hernandez, The McKinney Avenue Contemporary, Dallas; Fundación Museo Jacobo Borges, Caracas 1998

Water. Jaume Plensa, text by Jaume Plensa and an interview by Yves Lecointre, Fonds régionale d'art contemporain, Picardie, 1998

Jaume Plensa, text by Renato Barili, Girogio Cortenova, Robert Lambareli, Skira editore, Milano & Palazzo Forti, Verona, 1998

Jaume Plensa, Text by John Berger, Daniel Adadie, Hanns--‐Jürgen Buderer, Jaume Plensa And interviewby Manuel J. Borja--‐Villel, Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona; Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris; Malmö Konsthall, Malmö; Städtische Kunsthalle Mannheim, Mannheim, 1997

Jaume Plensa Small Sculptures, text by Keith Patrick, Galeria Die Brucke, Buenos Aires, 1997

Jaume Plensa, text by Keith Patrick, Centre de Cultura Sa Nostra, Palma de Mallorca, 1996

Islands, text by Robert J. Loescher, Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago 1996

Jaume Plensa, text by Lóránd Hegyi, Scognamiglio Et Teano Agencia d'Arte Moderna, Neapel, 1996

The Personal Miraculous Fountain, text by Robert Hopper, José Jiménez, Bruno Corá, Gloria Moure, The Henry Moore Sculpture Trust, Leeds, 1995

Jaume Plensa, One thought fills immensity, text by Werner Meyer, Alain Charre and Jaume Plensa, Stadtische Galerie Goppingen, Goppingen, 1995

Wonderland, Galeria Gamarra Y Garrigues, Madrid, 1994

Jaume Plensa, text by Flaminio Gualdoni, Gloria Moure, Bruno Corá, Jaume Plensa, Galleria Civica di Modena, Modena, 1994

Jaume Plensa, Un Sculpteur, Une Ville, text by Jean Pierre Rehm, Bruno Corá, Alain Charre, Biennale 1994, Valence, 1994

Memoires Jumelles, text by Jaume Plensa, Galerie de France, Paris; Galerie Alice Pauli, Lausanne, 1993

Auch 1991, Jaume Plensa, text by Norbert Duffort, Francois Barré, Ministère de la Culture en France, Mairie d'Auch, 1992

Jaume Plensa, text by Jaume Plensa, Galeria Carles Taché, Barcelona, 1992

Jaume Plensa, text by Florian Rodari, Gloria Moure, Galerie Eric Franck, Geneva, 1991

Jaume Plensa, text by Jaume Plensa, P.S. Gallery, Tokyo, 1991

Jaume Plensa, text by José Jiménix, Colección Monocrom Galeria B.A.T., Madrid, 1991

Prière, Jaume Plensa, text by José Jiménez, Galeria Carles Taché, Barcelona, 1990

Jaume Plensa. Colección Liu e Ignacio de Lassaletta, text by Maria Luisa Borrás, Centro de Exposiciones y Congresos, IberCaja, Saragossa, 1990

Jaume Plensa, text by Jaume Plensa, Galerie De France, Paris, 1990

Sculptures, Jaume Plensa, text by Martine Heredia, Eglise de Courmelois-Silo Art Contemporain, Ministére de la Culture - D.R.A.C. Champagne-Ardenne, Reims-Val-de-Vesle, 1990

Jaume Plensa, text by Menene Gras Balaguer, Galeria Carles Taché, Barcelona, 1990

Jaume Plensa 1, Edicions T, Barcelona, 1990

Jaume Plensa, text and interview by Gloria Moure, Galeria Carles Taché, Barcelona, 1989

Suite Tervuren, Jaume Plensa, text by Bart de Baere, Galerie Philippe Guimiot, Brussels, 1989

J aume Plensa, text by Gloria Moure, Galeria Rita Garcia, Valencia, 1988

Jaume Plensa. Sculptures, dessins, text by Thierry Prat, Bernard Lamarche-Vadel, Gloria Moure, Musée d'Art Contemporain Saint Pierre, Lyon, 1988

Jaume Plensa, text by Jesús Ferrero, The Sharpe Gallery, New York City; Galerie Folker Skulima, Berlin, 1988

Jaume Plensa. Sculptures, Dessins, text by Bernard Lamarche-Vadel, Galerie Philippe Guimiot, Brussels, 1987

Jaume Plensa. Escultures, text by Gloria Moure, Galeria Maeght, Barcelona, 1986

Jaume Plensa, Skulpturen, text by Alexander Dill, Galerie Folker Skulima, Berlin, 1984

Plensa, text by Gloria Moure, Galeria Ignacio de Lassaletta, Barcelona, 1983

Setmanes, 8 Artistes, text by S. Juanpere-Huguet, Galeria Artema, Barcelona, 1979

Estructures, Jaume Plensa, text by Tomás Bosch, Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, 1980

Plensa Desenhos, text by Jule Barreto, Fundacao Caetano Do Sul, Sao Paulo, 1976