Jaume Plensa
The stainless steel sculptures are made up of individual letters from a variety of alphabets.
Jaume Plensa believes in the power of art.
“The part of art that I love is how it can make anyone feel at home exactly where they are when they view it,” says Plensa, sitting in the airy, light-filled lobby of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. He is outside the gallery where his installation, Talking Continents, is currently on display.
The Spanish-born sculptor has a reputation as one of the most sought-after living artists. One of his most famous pieces, Crown Fountain, is the 50-foot-tall LED-lit piece in Chicago’s Millennium Park. It depicts a rotating cast of the city’s denizens; a massive fountain shoots water from their lips into a nearby reflecting pool. The work, beloved by visitors across the globe, cost a whopping $17 million in 2004, and was installed with the help of a crew of international engineers.
Talking Continents, on display until April 15, is a much smaller-scale work, but it still deftly addresses the themes of fundamental human connection and experience that define much of Plensa’s earlier work.
The only single-piece gallery show in Plensa’s extensive career, Talking Continents is made up of 19 steel sculptures suspended from the space’s ceiling at various heights, spanning the entire gallery. Many of the objects appear as cloud-like orbs or islands, while others represent human figures ascending from these circular bases in postures both pensive and vulnerable — some kneeling, others seated, clutching their legs against their chests.
For Plensa, much of the appeal and organization of his Madison show was dictated by the venue itself, designed by internationally renowned architect Cesar Pelli. Noting that the arrangement of every piece is contingent upon the space in which it is displayed, the artist gushes about the attraction he felt to the museum’s enormous street-facing windows; he loves how they flood the spaces with light and expose its contents to passersby. “I was drawn to it,” he says.“While we were finishing our setup, I spent all my time at the side of the gallery, at that enormous window, like a little kid.”
Appearing at first as a system of web or netting, Plensa’s sculptures are actually made up of individual letters from a variety of alphabets, seamlessly woven together.
Experiencing the exhibit up close affords viewers a sense of wholeness and community. Letters blend together, shifting and bending to form recognizable shapes of people. Their linguistic meaning is subsumed into the universality of the human form, providing a sense of recognition and comfort.
By connecting ideas and images of language with these human forms, Plensa is trying to facilitate feelings of connection: “They’re seen in a crouching or kneeling position. This is the posture we have when we are born, and it’s also the posture we have when we are in conversation with ourselves. I’m trying to send a very strong message about hope, about the globality of hope.”
