Jaume Plensa
Spanish, born 1955, lives and works in Barcelona and Paris
"Glückauf?"
Now on view
Jaume Plensa, "Glückauf?," 2004. Iron letters and wire. Courtesy of the artist and Richard Gray Gallery.
Letters that make up the strands of a curtain are vertically strung in the front of the Nasher Museum's permanent collection gallery. The letters spell out the text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This document was adopted by the United Nations in 1948 as a response to the atrocities of World War II. It outlines the specific rights every human should be given, including spiritual and political freedoms and economic and cultural rights. The viewer is invited to interact with this text physically by walking through the letters and watching as the configurations change.
This work was originally made for a museum located in a German mining town. The title comes from a phrase used by German miners as early as the 1500s to wish luck to a fellow miner, either in his ability to hit ore or for his strenuous trip from the depths of the mine back to the Earth's surface. Today it is used as a greeting among miners to signify that they are part of a supportive community. Artist Jaume Plensa has added a question mark to the traditional greeting to create the title, which invites the viewer to contemplate how the words of the declaration resonate in different contexts.
"The Heart of Trees," 2007
On view through February 3, 2011
Bronze, earth, trees
Courtesy of the artist and Richard Gray Gallery
An installation on the Nasher Museum's front lawn of six seated self-portraits of the artist, cast in bronze, each with his arms and legs wrapped around living trees.
"The Heart of Trees" consists of several seated self-portraits of the artist, cast in bronze, with his arms and legs wrapped around living trees. The artist's hope is that the trunks of the trees will eventually grow into the figures so each truly exists as one.
For Plensa, the body becomes a vessel for information, a surface on which to record words. The figures are inscribed with names of composers, such as Ludwig van Beethoven, Béla Bartók, and George Gershwin. By naming particular composers, the viewer's own memories of hearing songs are brought into the experience of the work, providing an interactive dimension to the sculptures, which are placed in a new context each time they are displayed.
