Acclaimed Spanish visual artist, sculptor, designer and engraver Jaume Plensa is renowned for his ability to weave spirituality, corporeality, and collective memory into his sculptures and installations, using a wide range of materials. Many of his iconic sculptures can be found in public spaces, in some of the most evocative places in the world. The city of Leuven now joins this list with the acquisition by KU Leuven of The Four Elements, the first permanent sculpture by Jaume Plensa in Belgian public space. The sculpture The Four Elements consists of two parts in bronze, located in two places, the gallery of the KU Leuven University Library and the newly created St-Raphaël Square. The first part, Fire, commemorates the resurrection of the University Library after the devastating fire of World War I. Water, Earth, Air, the second part, rises like a totem pole on a new urban site that is a meeting point for health care and medicine. This collection of essays documents how the two parts of the sculpture and its two sites represent a broader trinity of interaction and togetherness: between the university and the city and its public spaces, between research and art, between the study of health (in this case the brain) and organizing care.

Over the past 25 years, the renowned Spanish Catalan artist and sculptor Jaume Plensa (born 1955) has established himself as one of the most ubiquitous exponents of public sculpture. À Bordeauxfocuses on 11 monumental new sculptures by the artist installed in Bordeaux, France, seven of which have never before been reproduced. These include "Paula" (2013), a cast-iron sculpture standing over 23 feet tall, and "Marianna & Awilda" (2013), a work in stainless steel composed of figures seated facing one another in a dialogue. In addition to these and other new sculptures, this publication also includes celebrated works by Plensa in Millennium Park, Chicago; the Burj Khalifa, Dubai; the BBC Broadcasting Tower, London; Pearson International Airport, Toronto; Daikanyama, Tokyo; and Raoul Wallenberg Square, Stockholm, among many other sites worldwide.

The Barcelona artist Jaume Plensa is best-known for his spectacular Crown Fountain in Millennium Park, Chicago. Constructed between 1999 and 2004 with support from the Crown Foundation, this work features water cascading down two monumental towers, as well as video and lighting effects. Alternating images recorded on video by Plensa show the faces of 1,000 Chicagoans from all segments of society. Every 12 minutes these faces transform into gargoyles reminiscent of traditional fountains. Plensa's Crown Fountain, which swiftly became a popular public attraction, is comprehensively presented in this monograph, along with an extensive chronology of his multi-faceted oeuvre.

The exhibition catalogue devoted to the artist Jaume Plensa (Barcelona,1955) undertakes a journey through the work of one of the internationally best known Catalan sculptors. 0With a selection of artworks ranging from the eighties to the present day, the exhibition centres on the dialogue that takes place between his representations of the human figure and his abstract works. This tension is the thread running through his body of work, a corpus that highlights the force of opposing pairs such as lightweight/compact, light/dark, silence/sound, spirit/matter and life/death. His works address the very condition of being: our physical and spiritual essence, our consciousness of ourselves and our past, our moral codes and dogmas, and our relationship with nature. 0The catalogue includes a photo essay of the exhibition in the galleries of the MACBA, a text by the artist, and articles by the exhibition curator and director of the MACBA Ferran Barenblit, British art curator Clare Lilley, writer and art critic Catherine Millet, and contemporary composer Hector Parra.00Exhibition: MACBA, Barcelona, Spain (01.12.2018-22.04.2019) / Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow, Russia (08.07-22.09.2019).