Jaume Plensa in Bordeaux (part 2 of 2)

Hello,

Here is the second part of Jaume Plensa's exhibition. 

Marianna & Awilda can be found inside the city hall courtyard. Made out of stainless steel mesh, they invite us to a silent conversation. Transparency reveals the pure beauty of man as much as it may hint to man's inherent fragile mind, dreams, and aspirations:




"Silence is desire, dream, aspiration, something so unknown and inaccessible that we can only imagine it. We talk a lot about silence: a silent house, the calmness and silence of a landscape, the silence of a hospital or a church, the silence of the night. However, the silence of these examples is not real. Our silence is a whisper?
Whispers like bridges between the sound and the silence between what we know and what we want.
As soon as everything is calm and silent, when we believe that we have reached the silence, we discover something which interrupts, something as close and familiar as our own body. Our noisy body.
For William Blake, "One thought fills immensity." Maybe a thought is only another whisper of our body, and our body is another whisper of life.
I invite you to listen to these whispers.
I invite you to imagine what silence is."
Jaume Plensa (Pistoia, 1997)


House of Knowledge is to be found at the Place de la Bourse, one of the most impressive architectural hotspots in Bordeaux. Here, the sculpture is huge, open, people are invited inside, can sit and appreciate the void it offers for contemplation.  Letters are welded together to form this faceless shape which looks out in the direction of the new bridge, the Chaban-Delmas Bridge that was inaugurated a few months ago, as a way to contemplate the expansion of the city.



"All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire
But my heart is exclusively my own."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


With Silent Music II (Place St Pierre), we see a figure in a foetal position composed of notes. Music is a universal language, transcending the limits of languages and cultures, a bridge between peoples.



To finish, Ainsa II is to be found Place de la Comédie and shows a male figure in a meditative pose with symbols composing his shape. Again, we see Plensa's preoccupation with the question of language, but this time, with letters reduced to mere symbols, shapes that can be arranged at a different level than the usual order of language. Again, we transcend the limits of national language to reach a higher, universal plane.


By now, you probably have a hunch that all of these art installations are in direct contact and dialogue with the city and its inhabitants, one of the trademarks of Jaume Plensa. 


I hope you have enjoyed this exhibition. Thank you so much, Jaume Plensa. Your art has struck a chord in many people here.

Sabrina S.

Comments

  1. Those sculptures are amazing! I had never heard of them so thanks so much for sharing this.

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