Presented by GRAY | BB04

Jaume Plensa’s totemic works are the first in a new series of portraits carved directly into tree trunks and then cast in bronze. Plensa draws a connection between the specific humanity of his sitters and the timelessness of nature by maintaining the partial form of the trunks within the completed sculptures. By depicting his subjects with closed eyes, Plensa seeks to evoke a sense of silence and stillness—a concept central to the artist’s practice.

Over the past thirty-five years, internationally celebrated Spanish artist Jaume Plensa (b. 1955) has produced a multifaceted body of work creating sculpture that speaks to the capacity and beauty of humanity. Conventional sculptural materials like glass, steel, and bronze blend with unconventional media such as water, light, and sound to create hybrid works of intricate energy, psychological weight, and symbolic richness.