CHICAGO, IL.- GRAY announced two concurrent solo exhibitions devoted to Jaume Plensa, opening this fall at the gallery’s Chicago and New York outposts.
Jaume Plensa: Beyond Silence, opening at GRAY Chicago on September 17, marks the artist’s tenth solo exhibition with the gallery. Bringing together monumental carved-wood reliefs, dramatically vertical sculptures in cast iron and granite, and intimate bronze works, Beyond Silence examines two long-standing central tenets of his practice—scale and material. Unified thematically in their representation of the figure, the artist explores the possibility and continuity of our shared human experience.
At the center of the exhibition are two monumental relief sculptures in carved wood, Beyond Silence (Julia) and Beyond Silence (Maria), each measuring twenty-eight feet in length. The works engage directly with the architecture of the space, spanning the gallery much like the wooden trusses that define the interior. Their monumental scale transforms the human figure into an architectural presence, collapsing the distinction between sculpture and the built environment.
Installed alongside the reliefs are three sculptures from a new series, Clouds, each measuring seven feet in height. Combining cast iron with granite, the works bring together materials of contrasting texture and appearance. The industrial character of the cast iron is set against the smooth surface of granite, producing an unexpected sense of suspension and weightlessness. The center of the exhibition holds bronze sculptures from the Twilight series, each approximately twenty inches high. The smaller scale of the bronzes shifts the encounter from the architectural to the personal, inviting a more intimate viewer experience.
Concurrently, GRAY debuts a new series of sculptures and wall drawings in Jaume Plensa: Remote, Serene, Ethereal, a co-presentation with Galerie Lelong at GRAY’s New York gallery on Madison Avenue. The exhibition features the titular trio of three elongated portraits in bronze, echoed in the gallery by a wall drawing the artist will create on site.
Over the past four decades, internationally celebrated Spanish artist Jaume Plensa (b. 1955) has produced a multifaceted body of work creating sculpture that speaks to the capacity and beauty of humanity. Conventional sculptural materials like glass, steel, and bronze blend with unconventional media such as water, light, and sound to create hybrid works of intricate energy, psychological weight, and symbolic richness.
In addition to his international museum and gallery exhibitions, Plensa has celebrated public projects on view around the world. Installations of his monumental sculptures include We at the Shard in London; Laura in Los Angeles; Behind the Walls at Rockefeller Center, New York and in the historic courtyard of Museo Nacional de Arte in Mexico City; Julia in Plaza de Coln in Madrid; Dreaming in Toronto; and Water’s Soul on the Hudson River. Plensa has received many national and international awards including the Honorary Doctorate from Universitat Autnoma de Barcelona in 2018 and the 2013 Velazquez Prize awarded by the Spanish Cultural Ministry. His solo museum exhibitions include Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Yorkshire, England; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofa, Madrid, Spain; MAMC–Muse d’art moderne et contemporain Saint-tienne Mtropole, Saint-tienne, France; and Max Ernst Museum Brhl des LVR, Brhl, Germany. He lives and works in Barcelona.
