Jaume Plensa

Duality is one of the constants in Plensa's creative process, in which he combines opposites (the material and the immaterial, presence and absence, reason and spirit) with the aim of eliciting emotions of the viewer, appealing to sensorial factors and to memory. His work is highly elaborate and personal, and the spectator has to interact with the pieces, touch them, enter them or walk around them.

Plensa's work, occupying two exhibit spaces at CAC Málaga, focuses on the human dimension and its relation to its surroundings, often questioning the role of art in society and the position of the artist. By the same token, the close relationship between the human body and 'the whole' is defined with great clarity, as the artist himself explains in the text to the exhibition catalogue.

This Catalan sculptor transforms the physical space into an extension of mental concepts. Through his work, he carries out an exercise in memory. A series of ideas and concepts, often dense and involved, fill the artist's intricate and personal work, whose result is volumetric and radiant. The artist uses varied materials in his works, such as resin, polyester, steel, iron, water, glass or nylon, not because of the innate characteristics of these supports, but on the basis of a need to attain different modulations for his ideas and thus obtain a differentiated spatial form for each idea. Language is also a fundamental element for Plensa, as he conceives of it as a "container of memory". By the same token, literature constitutes one of the main sources of inspiration for his work, as reflected in The Song of Songs and The Three Graces.

Silence and light are likewise intrinsic and fundamental aspects of his pieces, both elements comprising recurring motifs that unify the exhibition. The Wispern installation is one of the most spectacular works in the exhibit, consisting of 44 cymbals with engraved phrases and words - excerpts from William Blake's Proverbs of Hell - upon which droplets of water are constantly dripping, producing a whispering sound whose aim is to transport the spectator to a world of silence. On this occasion, at the CAC Málaga exhibit, this installation will be shown in its largest format to date, more cymbals having been added to the piece since its initial creation in 1998.

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Jaume Plensa