Forgotten Dreams, 2020
Cast aluminum and light
Dimensions variable
For Art Basel Unlimited 2025, GRAY and Galerie Lelong present Jaume Plensa’s Forgotten Dreams, a sculptural installation of twenty-one cast aluminum doors inscribed with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Drafted in 1948 by representatives from every region of the world, the UDHR sought to enshrine a code of fundamental human rights.
Installation view of Jaume Plensa: Forgotten Dreams, 2023, GRAY Chicago
Envisioned for the first time ever as an immersive, open-ended passage, Forgotten Dreams draws viewers to contemplate the commitment necessary for humanity to fulfill the declaration’s mission. Conceived for Unlimited with a wall of eleven doors and a facing wall of ten with one spot left bare, Plensa posits that no matter how troubled the past, nor how painful the present, the future is yet to be written.
Plensa’s first installation of doors in public space was a commission 30 years ago by the city of Valence, France. From 1994-95, 21 doors inscribed with words and lit by a single bulb remained installed across the city’s surface. In 2019, he was invited to present his 21 doors inscribed with the UDHR throughout the city of Herning, DK, and another variant of the installation was included in a larger exhibition of Plensa’s work at GRAY Chicago in 2023.
Jaume Plensa, 2021
Installation view of Utopia, 2021, exhibited in Jaume Plensa, Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, 2021
JAUME PLENSA (b. 1955, Barcelona, Spain) is internationally renowned as one of today’s leading contemporary sculptors best known for his largescale public installations. For more than forty years, the artist has created meditative sculptures, drawings, and environments that make manifest a sense of spirituality and an atmosphere of introspection. Working across materials as varied as stone, steel, glass, wood, light, water, video, language, and sound, Plensa’s practice invites viewers to ruminate on their fundamental relations to space, to silence, to beauty, and to a shared humanity.
Solo museum exhibitions of Plensa’s works have been presented at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Yorkshire, England; Joan Miró Foundation, Barcelona, Spain; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; MAMC–Musée d’art moderne et contemporain Saint-Étienne Métropole, Saint-Étienne, France; and at the Max Ernst Museum Brühl des LVR, Brühl, Germany, among many others.
The artist’s work is held in dozens of institutional collections around the world, and he received numerous national and international awards, including honorary doctorates from Notre Dame University and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, as well as the Velazquez Prize awarded by the Spanish Cultural Ministry. Plensa lives and works in Barcelona.
Nuria, 2017
Stainless steel
138 x 108 x 135 inches (350 x 275 x 344 cm)
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
SELECT PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, New York
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Bonte Museum, Seogwipo, South Korea
The Burger Collection, Hong Kong, China
Colección Banco de España, Madrid, Spain
The Contemporary Art Museum of Honolulu, Honolulu, Hawaii
FLAG Art Foundaiton, New York, New York
Fondation Paribas, Paris, France
Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Fundación Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain
Galeria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Palazzo Forti, Verona, Italy
Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Institut Valencia d'Art Modern, Valencia, Spain
Kirishima Open Air Museum, Kyushu, Japan
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Mie Prefectural Art Museum, Tsu, Japan
Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan
Musée d'Art Contemporain, Lyon, France
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain
Museum Marugame Hirai, Marugame, Japan
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York
National Museum of Korea, Seoul, South Korea
Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami, Florida
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California
Seattle Art Museum, Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle, Washington
Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Singapore
Towada Arts Center, Towada, Japan