double take
The space beneath the trees: World-reowned sculptor invites Rice to step insidehis new figures
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Plensa discusses the evolution of Mirror with a small group of Rice students.Photo by Tyler Rudick -
Jaume Plensa's Mirror was dedicated late Tuesday afternoon at Rice University infront of a crowd about 100 guests.Photo by Tyler Rudick -
From left: Rice University president David Leebron, artist Jaume Plensa and BillSick, the Rice alum who funded the sculpture.Photo by Tyler Rudick -
Plensa's Crown Fountain in Chicago
More than 100 guests gathered beneath a grove shaded oaks at Rice University on Tuesday to hear renowned artist Jaume Plensa discuss Mirror, his new site-specific installation near the Brochstein Pavilion.
Heralded by the New York Times as "one of the world’s most celebrated public artists," Plensa made a name for himself in the United States with 2004's monumental Crown Fountain — the oft-photographed video sculptures in Chicago's Millennium Park that feature LED faces that spout water from their mouths.
In the past decade, Plensa has displayed a varied body of work in galleries and museums across the globe. And, while his pieces range from small contemplative drawings to massive public installations, the artist perennially returns to two basic visual themes: The human body and written text.
"A piece of art is nothing static," renowned artist Jaume Plensa tol d the audience. "It's a link with a community, a group of people."
Plensa made his Houston debut at Buffalo Bayou Park in early 2011 with Tolerance, a series of seven kneeling figures created from a mesh of floating typeset, an instantly recognizable form that has come to mark many of his recent public sculptures.
For Rice installation he placed two of these same crouched forms directly opposite one another, recalling, as the title suggests, a mirror reflection.
Unlike the Tolerance sculptures, however, Plensa's new pieces have been scaled-up to allow viewers to step inside the figures themselves. Also, rather than one text type, the artist has used characters from Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Greek, Hindi and Latin.
"A piece of art is nothing static. It's a link with a community, a group of people," he told the audience at the dedication ceremony after speeches from Rice president David Leebron, Rice public art director Molly Hipp Hubbard and Bill Sick, a friend of the artist who funded the installation.
Plensa said he hopes the university uses the sculptures as a meeting area, a place to launch new discussions and relationships. "Art," he noted, "has a tremendous capacity to transform reality in this way."
Later in a one-on-one interview, Plensa expalined: "With this piece, I wanted to create a conversation with the trees and all their branches. All these rows of trees are like veins in the campus, linking together many different types of buildings and many different aesthetics.
"The intention was to create a mirror, but with more emotion.
"Like much of my work, this piece deals with duality — you and your shadow, you in front of the mirror, body and soul. I wanted to invite people to go inside one figure and talk with somebody in the sculpture on the other side."
Milly Alcock and Krypto in Supergirl.Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures