Dreaming - Part 1
Dreaming (2017), ignites community and shared experiences that captivate Toronto’s Financial District — where ideas are encouraged, and pedestrians look to listen in unison. At first glance, the large dominantly powerful, white sculpture represents a portrait of a subdued young girl with closed eyes, “focused on the interior of the earth and the souls of the people”, states Plensa. Created with polyester resin and marble dust, this sculpture situated over eight meters high enhances the architectural narrative of Oxford’s dynamic buildings. Plensa recreates visible forms of dreams and dissolves boundaries, opening up community interaction. Plensa incorporates spirituality, silence, self-identification and light into each of his unique works, bringing humanity to look inwards at their own beauty and become closer to one-another than ever before.
Commissioned By: Oxford Properties Group.
Image Credit: Oxford Properties Group.
Transcript
I’m Jaume Plensa, I’m the creator of “Dreaming”. Well “Dreaming” it’s a portrait of a young woman about 28 feet tall with the eyes closed in a kind of dream state attitude. As you can see, the piece has a certain kind of concentration on herself.
I’ve been invited long, long time ago to do a meeting with the people taking care of that commission, that project in the City of Toronto. And when I did the meeting with them I immediately understood that for that site the human presence was needed. I love cities but I prefer people, I love architecture but I love people. And I remember my conversation with them saying, “Lookit, I think this area’s amazing, it’s beautiful, the shapes of the buildings are great but we need to introduce the presence of humanity to create a certain silence in where viewers could enjoy themselves, their dreams, their thoughts.” And I know it seems sometimes strange that in the public space I’m talking about intimacy, but I think it’s so important to create areas in where people could be really relaxed with themselves.
I hope you can see in the sculpture that the main intention for me is not only reproduce a face of somebody. For me the most important is to transform the face in a kind of container, fill it up with dreams, with intentions, with thoughts. I guess a sculpture is not only a physical element. I guess the most important part of a sculpture is the invisible things that is keeping in. It seems a contradiction but sculpture is probably the best way to talk about invisibility. Because even if it’s a pretty big sculpture it seems (to) disappear when you’re walking all around. Because I compress the volume of the piece and when you are right in front it seems normal, it seems real, it seems okay. But when you are walking around it’s getting thinner and thinner and thinner and it seems that the face of that young woman is disappearing in the air. It’s a certain surreal experience for the viewer to walk around. I love that, because I would love to pass the certain information that they are in front of something special, unique, different. They are really in front of beauty.
Runtime: 2:38