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EL ALMA DEL EBRO, 2008
Site: ExpoZaragoza, Zaragoza (Spain)
Painted stainless steel
11 metre x 850 x 840 cm
There are inevitable contradictions in sculptural work; fatalities, it seems, of the genre: the impression of mass, the feeling of immobility, and the intrusion in space. An artist’s talent resides in transgressing these contradictions, in responding to the spirit of the place rather than imposing a pre-existing piece of work on it.
Plensa is obsessive with image in his works of art that represent the body. Even when the body is not explicitly represented, the mimetic dimensions of the work, the descriptive precision of his sculptures, evoke it. Words, have been a constant element of his work from the outset, and are conceived chiefly as an organic secretion. It seems that Plensa applies the formula described by Michel Leiris when explaining Tzara’s work: “We think through our mouths”. The first words that Plensa inscribed on his sculptures are a reply.
