Jaume Plensa

Now on view at La Llotja, Jaume Plensa’s exhibition Mirall reflects on the dualities of the world: body and soul, matter and spirit, light and darkness, opacity and transparency, past and future. Inside La Llotja, two 7-metre-high stainless steel sculptures, Invisible Laura and Invisible Rui Rui, are installed, facing each other and with their backs to the main door.

Plensa explains that ‘this is a project with which I reflect on the dualities of the world. The ancient tradition of classical Rome had Janus as one of its main gods. He was a divinity with two faces: one looking to the past and the other to the future. The reflection of our face in the mirror, in the faces of all others, lovers and friends, strangers and acquaintances. Men and women share their faces in the most generous of our acts. The duality of body and shadow, of day and night, of joy and pain. The duality of all our dreams that are still waiting to be born in the reflection of a mirror’.

The portraits featured in the exhibition are constructed by delicately bent stainless steel wires, delineating the faces of Plensa’s subjects while simultaneously wavering in and out of legibility. With deep material awareness, Plensa offers the illusion of a weightless form, rendering otherwise monumental works into light, airy apparitions.

Mirall is organized by the Balearic Government in collaboration with the Stiftung für Kunst and Kultur e.V. in Bonn.