Sculptures by internationally renowned Spanish artist Jaume Plensa will be on view concurrently at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee from Friday, June 5 to September 7, 2015, and at Cheekwood Botanical Garden & Museum of Art to November 1, 2015. Seen together, the indoor and outdoor installations exemplify the range of Plensa’s work, which reflects timeless philosophical queries.
“Jaume Plensa: Human Landscape” is a cross-city celebration of the preeminent sculptor’s oeuvre. “We are so pleased to partner with Cheekwood in bringing this exhibition to Nashville. The work is going to be extraordinary within its garden setting,” says Frist Center Chief Curator Mark Scala. “Plensa has earned an international following among curators, critics and art lovers. He has also earned acclaim with the wider public, which has responded enthusiastically to work that is both beautiful and poetic, reflecting humanity’s physical existence, psychology, and spirituality in ways we can all feel connected to.” In addition to the three large-scale works shown indoors in the Frist Center’s Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery, Plensa’s Isabella (2014), a monumental head, will be on view outside the Center’s Demonbreun Street entrance until October 2016, and will mirror a “sister” cast-iron sculpture sited at Cheekwood.
Plensa works with steel, bronze, alabaster and synthetic resin, but the artist expresses a desire for his viewers to look beyond the materials, stating, “When for some reason you understand that life is not a physical problem and that physical material is hiding something essential, you must talk about spirituality.” Many of Plensa’s sculptures examine dualities and paradoxes, such as the coexistence of the sacred and the worldly. Viewed from the front, Isabella (2014) appears as a detached Buddha-like deity with eyes shut as if asleep.
The selection of works at Cheekwood will span the historic estate’s grounds, gardens, and museum galleries and will feature nine large-scale outdoor sculptures, indoor installations and sculptures, and a selection of works on paper. As part of the Cheekwood exhibition, Plensa will create new works, including a double sculpture entitled Soul of Words, which will be sited on the prominent color garden lawn. After closing in Nashville, Jaume Plensa: Human Landscape will travel nationally to two or three additional venues, including the Toledo Museum of Art in Toledo, Ohio (June 17–November 6, 2016).
More at www.fristcenter.org.