Yorkshire Sculpture Park presents the first major UK exhibition of sculpture and drawings by Jaume Plensa, with new and recent work displayed in the Underground Gallery and surrounding landscape. The extraordinary exhibition combines an unfurling dialogue of sculpture and landscape with a series of deeply moving gallery installations. Encouraging silent contemplation as well as physical and sensory exploration, Plena’s work examines the joy and contradictions of the human condition.
On the Underground Gallery roof are Nuria and Irma, the heads of two girls made in steel mesh, which seem to contain the statuesque trees of the Formal Garden and the valley beyond. Inside the galleries are an intense and powerful group of eleven alabaster heads, Jerusalem - a circle of 11 gongs engraved with text from Song of Songs, from the Biblical text Songs of Solomon, which can be gently struck to fill the room with sound, In The Midst Of Dreams, a group of illuminated heads with closed eyes, Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil – three large fibreglass resin ‘angels’ suspended from the gallery walls and Twenty-Nine Palms - a curtain of cut steel letters made of lines from poems and texts that have inspired the artist.
Plensa has an international reputation for major exhibitions and public art projects around the world, making sculpture, drawings, prints, acoustic installations and designs for opera and theatre. Pushing technical and artistic boundaries, his often transparent, large-scale sculptures incorporate light, sound and text, inviting the spectator’s active participation in a space where art and language, nature and culture, sound and communication collide and entwine.
A significant outdoor piece at YSP is House of Knowledge, part of a group of works in which the physical form of the body becomes architecture. With text forming a large human shape, visitors can walk inside and see the landscape through the spaces between steel letters. This 8-metre tall piece is a stunning addition to the YSP parkland. Building on the success of YSP’s recent exhibitions, this project encourages real interaction and a particularly tactile engagement with his work that will delight and enrich.
Born and based in Barcelona, Plensa has installed numerous iconic sculptures across the globe, including Crown Fountain (2004) in Chicago's Millennium Park and Nomade (2007) in Antibes. UK projects include Breathing (2008), a memorial to international news journalists placed on the roof of BBC Broadcasting House, which projects a fine beam of light every day during the 10 O’clock news bulletin, and Dream (2009), a 20-metre high sculpture created for St Helens as part of Channel 4’s Big Art Project.
Jaume Plensa at Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Now extended until 22 January 2012
