Jaume Plensa Explores Humanity in 'Forgotten Dreams' Exhibition
On view at GRAY Chicago on June 3.
Spanish visual artist Jaume Plensa dives into our core values as a species with his new solo exhibition, Forgotten Dreams.
The creative culmination and expression of years’ worth of travel, Plensa presents drawings, sculptures and installations at the Richard Gray Gallery in Chicago, exploring the depth of the human mind. While Plensa is internationally known for his portrait heads of young girls, Forgotten Dreams takes a more immersive approach. Entitled Where Are You? (2022), a row of heads serves as an garden of sorts to 21 sculptural doors, engraving each entryway with the 30 articles of the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” — the defining document of our moral laws, created by the United Nations in 1948 in response to World War II.
Paying homage to humanity’s noble efforts to come together in the name of freedom and autonomy, the artist regards the declaration as “the most beautiful poem in the world” and rightfully so. While our modern times find us more divided than ever, Forgotten Dreams urges us to look to the past as both a warning and inspiration — if “we repeat the mistakes of history, we have not only forgotten our dreams, but also the nightmares of our past.”
Take a look at Jaume Plensa’s latest exhibition in the gallery above, which will be on view at GRAY Chicago until June 3.
