An essential artist on the contemporary scene, Anna Malagrida, has been working in photography and videography since the late 90s with impressive consistency. Malagrida addresses political issues with great poetic delicacy and subtly works the staging, the play of light and chiaroscuro, confusing photography and pictorial art in the same gesture.
Anna Malagrida expresses the personal representation of the city of Paris through her images: the globalized city, on its walls and facades, appears as a skin that bears the traces of the events and crises it is going through.
Exhibition from January 17th to March 5th, 2023 at La Filature, Mulhouse Tuesday to Sunday from 2pm to 6pm + show nights (La Filature will be closed to the public from February 12 to 26.)
For more information you can visit the La Filature website through this link:
Elena del Rivero has generated new music sheets, compositions constituted in and from the fragment, a palimpsest of memories that create community and collective imagination. Each work is nourished by previous gestures and generates choreographies in which we can intervene from shared thought. All these works accompany each other and are constellations that make up her vital imagination.
In this stellar space other voices resonate, other internal and social movements. In this space that welcomes us today, intimate passages and collective revolts are presented in constant dialogue, all forging her visual writing. Images, words, sound, spaces, her universe flies over us and touches us.
Without this necessary friction, the movement that fosters conduction would not take place, which, in the composer’s words, becomes a universal vocabulary in which music becomes language, made up of gestures and cadences, of fragments and memories of a collective ritual.
Some of the fragments that make up these collages were part of other works that were on the floor of his old studio, located on Cedar Street in New York, the day the attack took place of the World Trade Center, on September 11, 2001.
We could imagine that, months later, after collecting the fragments, Butch Morris was being heard in some room in the city. Tunes that coexist and promote frequencies from almost forgotten remnants. It is interesting to point to that gesture before and after something, it is interesting to think together about that universal conduction.
It is convenient to attend to the generated landscapes, to the ritual that surrounds them and allows us to be united, with that pairing of images, rhythms and stories, with that simultaneity that promotes the performativity of the ritual.
Comprising nearly a hundred works, the exhibition covers Jaume Plensa’s production from 1990 to the present and has as a common thread the influence of literature and literature in his artistic production.
This morning, the Fundación Bancaja presented the exhibition “Jaume Plensa. Poetry of silence“, one of the largest retrospectives to date of one of the most renowned sculptors in international contemporary art. The exhibition reviews the artistic production of Jaume Plensa during four decades with the original influence of literature and letters in his work as a common thread, being the first retrospective to be developed from the prism of this creative universe that has been a constant throughout his career. The presentation was attended by Jaume Plensa; the president of the Fundación Bancaja, Rafael Alcón; and the curator of the exhibition, Javier Molins.
Installation shot, Poetry of Silence
Installation shot, Poetry of Silence
The exhibition is made up of about a hundred pieces dating from 1990 to the present, based on his sculptural work but also including works on paper. The exhibition tour reveals to the public some unpublished sculptures created by Plensa during the COVID-19 confinement, which are presented for the first time. The pieces presented include the iconic sculpture “Together” (2014), which was exhibited in 2015 at the Abbey of San Giorgio Maggiore during the Venice Biennale and has not been exhibited since.
The artist Jaume Plensa for TV3
Literature has always been a source of inspiration for Jaume Plensa. T.S. Eliot, William Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe or Vicent Andrés Estellés are some of the writers who have accompanied him throughout his life and have served as inspiration for countless works. This literary influence also extends to the letter itself as an element with which he composes his sculptures.
The exhibition shows how Plensa has used letters in many different ways, whether on curtains, gongs or the human body, perhaps his best-known works. This intersection of language with the human body is one of the bases of Plensa‘s work. As the artist explains, “a letter seems nothing, it is something humble, but together with others they form words, and words form texts and texts form thought“.
The sculptor began with the Latin alphabet and gradually incorporated other alphabets, such as Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Cyrillic, Korean, Hindi, etc. For Plensa, each letter has a unique beauty, but all of them together are a sample of the diversity of the world and the coexistence of different cultures.
From left to right: Javier Molins, Carlos Durán, Jaume Plensa and Laura Medina
The retrospective includes both large and medium-sized works as well as Plensa‘s more intimate small-format works. Along with the presence of literature as a source of inspiration, the exhibition includes other constant themes in his career such as silence, dreams and desire, music and family.
The exhibition “Jaume Plensa. Poetry of silence” can be visited at the headquarters of the Fundación Bancaja in Valencia (Plaza Tetuán, 23) from November 25, 2022 to March 19, 2023.
Rockefeller Center transforms into a spectacular sculpture park to usher in Frieze Sculpture 2019, a monumental exhibition fusing art and architecture in the heart of New York. From April 25 through June 28, 2019, this iconic building will house a unique collection of twenty stunning works by internationally renowned artists, including Jaume Plensa, Goshka Macuga, Ibrahim Mahama, Joan Miró, Paulo Nazareth, Sarah Sze and Hank Willis Thomas, among others.
One of the highlights of the exhibition is Jaume Plensa‘s imposing sculpture “Behind the Walls“, a 7.5-meter-tall figure of a girl made of white resin, with her hands covering her eyes. Located at the entrance of the Channel Gardens on Fifth Avenue, this work invites viewers to reflect on self-imposed blindness and the need to face reality. For Plensa, the piece is a direct representation of how we sometimes close ourselves off from the world around us in order to feel more comfortable, and he hopes the work will function as a mirror for viewers, prompting them to examine their own lives and choices.
The curatorship of Frieze Sculpture 2019 by Brett Littman, director of the Garden Museum, has succeeded in creating an immersive art experience that attracts visitors from far and wide. Although initially hesitant to place Plensa‘s sculpture in this location, Littman recognized that it was the perfect place for this provocative work, capable of arousing curiosity and introspection in those who view it. In addition to “Behind the Walls“, works by other prominent international artists adorn the surroundings of Rockefeller Center and the various lobbies of the surrounding buildings, creating a cityscape full of art and meaning. This has been thanks to the partnership of Frieze New York and the real estate company Tishman Speyer, which will open the doors of these emblematic spaces to fill them with the monumentality of the twenty pieces on display.
«It’s almost the way I feel every morning», Littman said. «You put your hands over your eyes and think: “I can’t believe we have to deal with another day like this”».
For his part, Jaume Plensa confesses that it is a very direct piece. «On many occasions, we are blinding ourselves with our hands to feel in a more comfortable position». On a personal level, the artist hopes that the work can function to the viewer as a mirror in which «you can look inside yourself and think about your options, your aptitudes, what you are doing in your life». (Quinn, 2019)
From the grandeur of Ibrahim Mahama’s works to the delicacy of Joan Miró’s creations, each piece on display offers a unique perspective on themes ranging from the personal to the political, the spiritual and the social. It is a unique opportunity to immerse yourself in the world of contemporary art and explore the diverse ways in which artists interpret and respond to the world around them.
Frieze Sculpture 2019 at Rockefeller Center is much more than just an exhibition; it is a testament to the power of art to inspire, provoke and transform, and a celebration of the pivotal role it plays in our society. Through June 28, visitors have the opportunity to be part of this unique experience that fuses aesthetic beauty with deep reflection, in the heart of the Big Apple.
