Considered one of the most important current sculptors, Jaume Plensa is internationally renowned for his projects in public spaces. Jaume Plensa creates sculptures and installations that unify individuals through connections of spirituality, the body, and collective memory.

As a multidisciplinary artist and one of the foremost Spanish artists internationally, Jaume Plensa (1955, Barcelona, Spain) has also experimented with etchings, drawing, sound, video and even stage design, collaborating with the company La Fura del Baus on four classical operas. He has also lived and worked in Germany, Great Britain, France and the USA, making sculptures and installations for public spaces in the aforementioned countries and in many others, such as Italy, Japan, Canada, Sweden and Thailand.

His work has been displayed in museums worldwide, including the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in Wisconsin, and the Museum of Modern Art, Helsinki. Moreover, he has received numerous Spanish and international awards like the prestigious Velázquez Award for the Arts in 2013.

In this instance, the invisible forms the essence of his intervention in the Palacio de Cristal: a group of steel mesh sculptures which take the space to draw the incomplete faces of figures hanging in the air, intersected by light and suspended in time. 

Curated by João Fernandes, this project is in conjunction with a retrospective at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Barcelona (MACBA) and features works stretching from the 1980s to the present day in a survey which reflects the dialogue, repeated across Plensa’s career, between the representation of the human figure and abstraction.

Image credits:

Jaume Plensa, Invisibles, 2018