Galerie Lelong & Co.

When asked which artists have inspired him the most, Jaume Plensa names musicians, playwrights, and poets. The sentence he quotes most often, "One thought fills immensity" (William Blake, Proverbs of Hell) is for him a definition of sculpture. As a sculptor, he has appropriated the four Parisian spaces of the Galerie Lelong & Co. around a title in French, Noir & Blanc.
In the large gallery on Tehran Street, portraits in pure white marble contrast with others in black granite. It is a kind of chess game that is played here, where the different pieces of the two colors answer each other and create an invisible architecture. The artist has also thought of the keys of a piano, where the blacks are distinguished from the whites and yet combine harmonious chords.

In the space of the Avenue Matignon, two portraits of young women have been freed from blocks of alabaster with earthy tones, and face each other. The faces are covered with white paint that highlights their softness, and contrasts violently with the rough stone visible on the back. In the back room, a series of small, dark bronze portraits are lined up one behind the other. As is often the case with Plensa, light plays a crucial role in bringing a dramatic dimension.

Noir & Blanc also evokes the elemental contrast of drawing, and it is a suite of inks on Japanese paper that the artist has chosen for the small exhibition room called the "Salon".
In the bookstore, the space devoted to prints, he presents a set of recent engravings and digital prints.

Jaume Plensa, born in Barcelona in 1955, has in recent months inaugurated very important sculptures in public spaces in London ("We" The Shard/London Bridge station) and across the street in Manhattan ("Water's Soul" Newport, New Jersey). For the new Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park building in Grand Rapids (USA), he created four huge bas-reliefs in white marble, 6 meters high and 108 meters long. Several exhibitions are scheduled in Europe in 2022: at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Céret (March 5 - June 6, 2022), at the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire (April 1 - November 1), at the Musée Picasso in Antibes (June 10 - September 25), at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, United Kingdom (June 10 - October 30, 2022), and at the Fundación Bancaja, Valencia, Spain (late 2022).

A monograph devoted to Jaume Plensa's drawings is in preparation and will be published by Skira in June 2022.

A collection of four texts by Catherine Millet on Jaume Plensa, Le Silence du scribe, is published by Galerie Lelong & Co. in May 2022.