Jaume Plensa makes a nest of silence in the Senda gallery

BarcelonaSilence is one of the pillars of Jaume Plensa's work. Through words and works, Plensa repeatedly calls for silence in order to open a door to introspection amidst the noise of contemporary society. This idea is expressed even more clearly in the sculptures in the series Nest [Nest]. These are women's heads that are still in the stone block. He exhibited three last year in the smallest church in Venice, that of San Gallo, and now exhibits two others in the Senda gallery in Barcelona with the title of Murmur, that is, a soft murmur like that made by a group of people praying in a low voice.

"After having exhibited in San Giorgio Maggiore, which is a large basilica, in San Gallo I was looking for a place of intimacy for the relationship between the work and the spectator. And with religion, because of its desire to transcend. And in the gallery we have sought something similar," says Jaume Plensa. In Senda everything has been concretized with the "duality" represented by these two heads cut off within the two halves of the same rock, of two girls called Lucía and Flora. "The interest is to go to the quarry and find the right stone, because the figure is already inside. It is a bit like, as Miquel Àngel did, rescuing it from its stone prison," explains the artist.

Plensa has conceived the exhibition as a journey from the noise of the street to the stillness that begins with a white painted bronze head, another version of Flora, while the next one, made of very dark bronze, Silent Hydrangea, asks for silence with his finger in front of his lips. "Silent Hydrangea "It links the spectator to a state of mind. And Flora opens and closes the exhibition," says Plensa, for whom "an idea is born with a form, a colour and a material." "It has to dialogue with the material so that the memory it already has and yours come to an agreement and the thing works," he says. As for alabaster, Plensa believes that it has "an inner light." It is a stone that has not finished forming, it is very soft, the rain melts it, the sun makes it opaque, it has a series of drawbacks that end up being a great virtue and a great advantage," he explains. "Sometimes you have the ability to respond to public space, which is like someone else's house, thanks to the memory you have treasured," says the artist. "It is very interesting that their memory and yours end up finding a common point - he adds - and that your work makes everything around it more interesting, more beautiful, more attractive, and that it improves the conditions of all the people who use it." The exhibition includes three small Murano glass heads, like those he also exhibited last year in San Gallo, and a series of drawings and collages with texts by León de Felipe and Charles Baudelaire. Jaume Plensa has more alabaster in his workshop to continue working on the nest line, but he admits that his head has fled to "other worlds", like those of dark granite sculptures whose surface is burned to reveal the interior and that of the cast iron. "When you decide to do something, your head takes you to another world," he says.