Presentation for Jaume Plensa – 58
“Art is absolutely savage, it has no compassion at all”, claimed Jaume Plensa at the presentation for 58, the latest publication from Artika. Starting from this initial promise, the artist plans to lead us toward his totally original way of expressing such difficult aspects as inner beauty, and by giving the viewer a leading role in the process.
The event to present the work, held on 17 February at the Fundación Pons in Madrid, was attended by a wide selection of the main media organs, including Antena 3, Telecinco, TVE, La Razón, La Vanguardia, ABC, Onda Cero and Cadena Cope. Also present at the event were members of the press linked with the world of culture, design, art and decoration.
The venue chosen for the premiere of Anna, the girl whose face appears on the sculpture, served to encourage the high media turnout, as well as the reviews that have since appeared in the newspapers and on the TV, which praised both this work in particular and the artist’s oeuvre in general over the years.
The title of the work – 58 – commemorates the age the artist was when he started work on this exclusive piece, which is comprised of an artist’s book, a study book and an original sculpture. The work will be only available to a select few, given that it is being produced in a limited, numbered edition of 998 copies in Arab numerals and 200 in Roman numerals.
Plensa, who has signed all the copies, said that his role in the conception of the artist’s book was as a “selector-magician”, choosing photographs that represent the past 10 years of his career, as well as the texts, fragments and quotations from famous authors, who are crucial to all those wishing to understand the artist’s thought processes. Furthermore, he highlighted the importance that Rafael Argullol’s participation represented for him as the creator of the study book, stating that “it is an extraordinary text that answers all the big questions for all the generations”.
During the event, the winner of the 2013 Velázquez Visual Arts Prize highlighted the fact that “beauty is a place where we can all meet; it is a shared place”. It is the beauty of his sculpture that should move the viewer, as the artist says himself: “I want it to function as a mirror. As an invitation to close our eyes, to dream, and then to share what has come into our minds”.
