JAUME PLENSA

Inspired by musicians, playwrights, and poets, Plensa often quotes William Blake’s sentence One thought fills immensity (Proverbs of Hell) which is, in his eyes, a definition of sculpture and this exhibition highlights some key aspects of Plensa’s work as a sculptor.

In the gallery’s largest space, located on 13, rue de Téhéran, the exhibition presents contrasting large-scale portraits, in pure white marble and black granite. The two colors in opposition create a sort of chess-game articulated by an invisible and silent architecture. But for the artist, this dialogue in black and white also evokes the musicality of piano keys, all related to a different sound of chord but harmonious in their combinaison. Pursuing this intricate dialogue in the more intimate space located on 38, avenue Matignon, two portraits of young women, carved out from earthen-hued alabaster blocks, face one another. The white paint covering their faces conveys an element of smoothness in total contrast with the roughness of the stone at the back of their heads. In the adjacent room, such tension is echoed in a series of small dark bronze portraits aligned in a row.

Pursuing this dialogue in black and white, inks on Japanese paper, recent engravings and digital prints are presented in the gallery’s Salon and Bookshop.

Recent site-specific works in the public space and other exhibitions in 2022

Plensa is known for his impressive sculptures in the public space including the recently inaugurated We at The Shard/London Bridge station and Water’s Soul, Newport, New Jersey, U.S.A in 2021. At the beginning of the same year, he has also created four gigantic low reliefs in white marble spanning a 6-meter height and a total length of 108 meters for the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park at Grand Rapids (USA).

In 2022, Plensa’s exhibitions are due to take place at Musée d’art Moderne de Céret (March 5th – June 6th), Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire (April 1st – November 1st), Musée Picasso in Antibes (June 10th – September 25th) as well as at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton, U.K. (June 10th – October 30th) and at Fundación Bancaja, Valencia, Spain (end 2022).

Forthcoming publications

A monograph of Jaume Plensa’s drawings will be published by Skira in June 2022. Coinciding with the exhibition Noir & Blanc, a collection of four texts by Catherine Millet on Jaume Plensa, Le Silence du scribe (The Silence of the Scribe) will be published by Galerie Lelong & Co. in May 2022.