Jaume Plensa presents a group of sculptures made of steel meshes that trap in space the unfinished faces of figures suspended in the air, traversed by light in an intelligent play of transparencies with the glass pavilion.
Invisibles is formed by three heads that seem to be suspended in the Crystal Palace. Each of the pieces has received a woman's name, Laura, Anna, Rui Rui. They have been made with a metal mesh, which allows them to take a greater or lesser coorporation depending on the daylight that crosses the pavilion of the Palacio de Cristal, generating in turn a new reinterpretation of the architecture of glass and iron so emblematic building in the madrileño park.
In the history of sculpture, the representation of a head was a invariable convention until Pablo Picasso subverted it in 1906 with his Woman's Head (Fernande). From its origins in funeral rites to its use as celebration of the life of a public figure or their power, the head reconciles absence with presence. its body is missing but not its identity, largely defined by the sculptural gesture that seeks to make it eternal. In invisibles, Jaume Plensa, the winner of the 2013 Velázquez Prize for the Arts, redefines a tradition and reinvents it. His heads are metamorphoses of the being, highligting with their transfigurations an identity of the human condition and becoming exercices in memory by breaking into the present through the materiality that configures them. There is an alterity between being and appearing, a permeability between similitude and difference that defines their complexity.
The monumentality of the figures contrasts with an interplay of tranaprencies that makes them into palimpsests of the mesh that defines them, as well as of the light that bathes them. Revealed in them through thousands of concave and convex forms are the processes of modeling and metamorphosis undergone by the real people who served as their models. By combining the draftsmanship of the artist's hand with the complex logarithmic operations of a computer program devised specially for the characteristics of the sculptor’s work, a tensión is constructed between abstraction and figuration. The sculptures invite us to move silently around them—among their materiality and immateriality—to discover their details and their secrets, the interplay of line and light. Absence is transformed into the presence of these sculpture-events, epiphanies that question our sense of place to become revelations of the tangible and intangible. Appearances and disappearances. An enigmatic memory of our time.
João Fernandes, curator
Jaume Plensa has a long trajectory, Velázquez Prize for Plastic Arts in 2013, and has become one of the top representatives of the international sculptural scene, espceial for his interventions in the public space, being known internationally for his pieces and installations in public spaces.
His work is not limited to sculpture, and in his wide range of interventions, Plensa has also worked with engraving, drawing, sound, video and even set design, collaborating with the company La Fura del Baus in four classical operas. , Atlantis, The Martyrdom of San Sebastian, The Damnation of Faust and The Magic Flute.
He has been awarded several national and international awards such as the Medaille des Chevaliers des Arts et Lettres of the French Ministry of Culture in 1993, the National Prize for Culture of Plastic Arts of the Generalitat de Catalunya in 1997 and the Velázquez Prize for the Arts Plastic in 2013.
His work is not limited to sculpture, and in his wide range of interventions, Plensa has also worked with engraving, drawing, sound, video and even set design, collaborating with the company La Fura del Baus in four classical operas. , Atlantis, The Martyrdom of San Sebastian, The Damnation of Faust and The Magic Flute.
He has been awarded several national and international awards such as the Medaille des Chevaliers des Arts et Lettres of the French Ministry of Culture in 1993, the National Prize for Culture of Plastic Arts of the Generalitat de Catalunya in 1997 and the Velázquez Prize for the Arts Plastic in 2013.
