The shock that the war in Ukraine is producing makes it creep into any conversation, always present. Jaume Plensa could not ignore it at the inauguration of Cada rostro es un lugar (Every Face is a Place), an exhibition with which the Museum of Modern Art of Céret puts an end to its expansion works and which is starring the characteristic spectacular faces of the Barcelona artist. "Many people are dying, many houses destroyed, many places to which one will not be able to return," he said, shortly after beginning the tour of the exhibition.
The sculptor wanted to dedicate it to the victims, with the wish that "this stupid war" soon comes to an end. "Sometimes you don't really know how art can help with this. By chance, I think this exhibition is a good tribute to all the faces we are seeing in the press, in dramatic photographs of women and children going into exile and of men who have decided to stay to defend their homeland, their country, their small place, their home, their work. I think we are so alike that, sometimes, it is scandalous that we call ourselves by different names or use different flags," he defended.
These faces that could be those of any human being will fill the Museum of Modern Art of Céret until June 6. Faces, that part that one finds so hard to see oneself and that one gives to others, is one of Plensa's obsessions, on which he has been working since 2005. Cada rostro es un lugar refers to a longer poem written by the sculptor, in which he defines sculpture as the great place to meet. "The face is the great portrait of the soul. It would be like a door we open to others. I have always thought that the face, full of tics, of signs, we move our mouth, our nose, our eyes... We create an alphabet of signs with which we can understand each other without using words," he explained.
"The face is the great portrait of the soul. It would be like a door we open to others"Another of his obsessions is silence, to which he invites with the first sculpture of the exhibition."Not to not speak but quite the opposite, to be able to understand and listen better to our thoughts, the vibration of our body and our ideas," she explained, especially considering that all the sculptures in the exhibition establish a ---silent--- dialogue among themselves.Carlota Silence, very similar to the sculpture he recently inaugurated in New Jersey and which looks towards Manhattan, welcomes the exhibition, although one has to wait a bit to delve into it. First, one must pass through the works that make up the museum's permanent collection, with a special prominence of Pablo Picasso. "It's like visiting your grandparents' house," he said.
After this cubist stroll, one reaches the newly opened area, where 12 unpublished sculptures show Plensa's characteristic way of understanding art, with which he manages to transmit peace and calm through immensity and illusions. All of them were created between 2019 and 2021, but the Barcelona artist preserved them in his studio in Sant Feliu de Llobregat until the works in the French museum were finished.
The sculptor has conceived the exhibition as if it were "a quiet walk at five in the afternoon," when one doesn't know if it's day or night. He talks about Oscar Wilde or William Shakespeare to explain how he creates. From the former, he borrows the lesson that, with the passage of time, there is more desire to live life, while from the latter, he is inspired by the conflict of Hamlet, between the tangible and the immaterial.
One of the exceptional features of this exhibition are about twenty large-format drawings that Plensa has mixed with the sculptures. Some of them have sheets as support. The artist has a friend who makes them and gave them to him to protect the sculptures from the dust that threatens them in his studio. Despite being destined to have such a prosaic function, Plensa rubbed them on the sculptures they were supposed to cover and ended up creating another type of artwork, "like a ghost of the sculpture." With pastel or charcoal, the sheets were impregnated with the spirit of the sculptures and carried them to another support. "I have more clothes," he warned.
The material Plensa uses in this exhibition is not only sheets, of course. There is also marble, bronze, and stainless steel. "Material is not an end, it is a vehicle," he remarked. For this reason, he goes back and forth from one to another: "I have no loyalty to them." Although not in the final works, wood also forms part of his creative process. In Rui Rui's words, it is difficult to see that origin in which he works the molds, only hinted at in the back. It is much more visible in the set formed by Wilsis, Julia, Carlota, and Laura Asia, made from logs. They are made of bronze, Plensa insisted, even if it's hard to believe.
Second time in Céret
It is not the first time Plensa has exhibited in Céret, a town in Northern Catalonia where artists such as Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, and Marc Chagall have been inspired. The first exhibition was in 2015 and "left a very good impression." It is for this reason that, with the inauguration of the museum's expansion, they thought of the Barcelona-born author. "It is always difficult to do a second exhibition," he emphasized. Under this premise, the artist has designed an exhibition complementary to the first one hosted by the Museum of Modern Art. He has the honor of inaugurating the new building that has been constructed, which integrates among the surrounding houses "as if it were a river."