Heart of Rivers

Jaume Plensa, 2016 (Spain)

Bronze and beech trees

“Rather close to my sculpture there was a sign saying “’Please do not touch’ . I replied that the administration had made a little mistake and that it had forgotten to complete the sign. The text should have said ‘Do not touch it: caress it’. You caress your wife, you don’t touch her. And this is what people should do with art: it needs to be caressed.”
–Jaume Plensa

Plensa is most well known for his depictions of the human face, like Julia and Nuria and Irma here at Alnoba. Heart of Rivers is something different – seven trees embraced by identical sculptures of the face of the artist closed in on himself as the names of rivers and classical composers flow across his body. Plensa believes that the flow of melody in music is like a river – that all words are like music, filling the space around them with energy.