For his upcoming exhibition Beyond Silence at GRAY Chicago, Jaume Plensa explores two long-central tenets of his practice—scale and material.

At the center of the exhibition are two monumental horizontal relief sculptures in carved wood, each measuring 28 feet long. Installed alongside are three dramatically vertical sculptures, each 7 feet high from a new series titled Clouds, that pair cast iron with granite. Lastly are comparatively small scale works at 20 inches high in bronze, from the Twilight series, completing the expression of material range and proportion across the exhibition.

Concurrently, GRAY debuts a new series of sculptures and wall drawings in Jaume Plensa: Remote, Serene, Ethereal, a co-presentation with Galerie Lelong at GRAY’s New York gallery on Madison Avenue. The exhibition features the titular trio of three elongated portraits in bronze, echoed in the gallery by a wall drawing by the artist will create on site.

Jaume Plensa: Beyond Silence opens at GRAY Chicago on Thursday, September 17 and is on view through December 19.

Artist bio: Over the past four decades, internationally celebrated Spanish artist Jaume Plensa (b. 1955) has produced a multifaceted body of work creating sculpture that speaks to the capacity and beauty of humanity. Conventional sculptural materials like glass, steel, and bronze blend with unconventional media such as water, light, and sound to create hybrid works of intricate energy, psychological weight, and symbolic richness.

In addition to his international museum and gallery exhibitions, Plensa has celebrated public projects on view around the world. Installations of his monumental sculptures include We at the Shard in London; Laura in Los Angeles; Behind the Walls at Rockefeller Center, New York and in the historic courtyard of Museo Nacional de Arte in Mexico City; Julia in Plaza de Colón in Madrid; Dreaming in Toronto; and Water’s Soul on the Hudson River.

Plensa has received many national and international awards, including the Honorary Doctorate from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in 2018 and the 2013 Velázquez Prize awarded by the Spanish Cultural Ministry. His solo museum exhibitions include Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Yorkshire, England; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; MAMC–Musée d’art moderne et contemporain Saint-Étienne Métropole, Saint-Étienne, France; and Max Ernst Museum Brühl des LVR, Brühl, Germany. He lives and works in Barcelona.