NASHVILLE, TENN.- Sculptures by internationally renowned Spanish artist Jaume Plensa are on view concurrently at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts from June 5 to September 7, 2015, and at Cheekwood Botanical Garden & Museum of Art from May 22 to November 1, 2015. Seen together, the indoor and outdoor installations exemplify the range of Plensa’s work, which reflects timeless philosophical queries.

Jointly organized by Cheekwood and the Frist Center, Jaume Plensa: Human Landscape is a cross-city celebration of the preeminent sculptor’s oeuvre. “We are so pleased to partner with Cheekwood in bringing this exhibition to Nashville. The work is going to be extraordinary within its garden setting,” says Frist Center Chief Curator Mark Scala. “Plensa has earned an international following among curators, critics and art lovers. He has also earned acclaim with the wider public, which has responded enthusiastically to work that is both beautiful and poetic, reflecting humanity’s physical existence, psychology, and spirituality in ways we can all feel connected to.” In addition to the three large-scale works shown indoors in the Frist Center’s Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery, Plensa’s Isabella (2014), a monumental head, is on view outside the Center’s Demonbreun Street entrance until October 2016, and mirrors a “sister” cast-iron sculpture sited at Cheekwood.

Jaume Plensa: Human Landscape marks the first time the artist’s work has been seen in such depth since his 2010 exhibition at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. Plensa’s works in the U.S. include Crown Fountain in Chicago’s Millennium Park, and Echo, formerly on view in Madison Square Park in New York.

Plensa works with steel, bronze, alabaster and synthetic resin, but the artist expresses a desire for his viewers to look beyond the materials, stating, “When for some reason you understand that life is not a physical problem and that physical material is hiding something essential, you must talk about spirituality.” Many of Plensa’s sculptures examine dualities and paradoxes, such as the coexistence of the sacred and the worldly. Viewed from the front, Isabella (2014) appears as a detached Buddha-like deity with eyes shut as if asleep. Yet from a side perspective, the viewer sees a flattened, angular head, positioned upright to suggest an awakened being in whom classical beauty merges with the sense of human malleability.

In Laura II, the illusion of perfection is offset with a reminder of the ravages of time as the top of a young girl’s head appears to have been forcefully sheared off. The three-part installation See no Evil, Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil (2010) is composed of internally illuminated figures that are posed in distressed positions, covering their eyes, ears and mouth respectively. Again Plensa juxtaposes detachment and consciousness. “The parable is concerned with the double-edgedness of shutting oneself off from the world,” says Mr. Scala. “It corrupts but also holds great beauty and meaning, which cannot be fully known without our senses.”

The suspended ovoid forms of Talking Continents (2014) are composed of letters from international alphabets such as Arabic, Chinese, and Hebrew, representing “graphic symbols of the universal need to communicate,” says Mr. Scala. “Like all of Plensa’s works, they transcend boundaries of language, tradition, and experience, operating on many levels at once, but in the end, celebrating the timeless power of beauty and love.”

The selection of works at Cheekwood span the historic estate’s grounds, gardens, and museum galleries and features nine large-scale outdoor sculptures, indoor installations and sculptures, and a selection of works on paper. As part of the Cheekwood exhibition, Plensa created new works, including a double sculpture entitled Soul of Words, which has been sited on the prominent color garden lawn. After closing in Nashville, Jaume Plensa: Human Landscape will travel nationally to two or three additional venues, including the Toledo Museum of Art in Toledo, Ohio (June 17–November 6, 2016).

In 2010, the Frist Center and Cheekwood collaborated to present works by Dale Chihuly, creating another crosstown art experience for the Nashville community.

Jaume Plensa was born in 1955 in Barcelona, Spain, where he continues to have a residence and studio. He has exhibited his work in museums and public sites around the world and has received many awards, including the Medaille de Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, awarded by the French Ministry of Culture (1993); the Government of Catalonia’s National Prize for Fine Art (1997); the National Prize for Fine Arts in Spain (2012); and the Velázquez Prize for the Arts (2013). Plensa is represented by Galerie Lelong, New York and Paris, and the Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago.