ART STOP 7

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Jaume Plensa

Wonderland, 2012

Painted stainless steel

12 meters x 7.8 meters x 10.7 meters

Located at: The Bow, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Commissioned by: Encana Corporation, Calgary, Alberta, Canada 2007


Jaume Plensa was born in 1955 in Barcelona, Spain, where he studied at the Llotja School of Art and Design and at the Sant Jordi School of Fine Arts. He currently resides and works in Barcelona.

 

Wonderland is a 12-meter tall bent-wire head of a young girl. The sculpture has an entrance in the neck area so viewers can wander through and see what it looks like from inside. Plensa provided the Calgary-based fabricator with a digital model of Wonderland, which was used to create templates for bending and rolling the steel bars that make up the sculpture

  • Approximately 4,633 linear metres of 22 mm and 18 mm steel bars were used in the sculpture

  • 324 smaller patches were precisely fabricated into 30 large patches that were assembled on site

  • Approximately 12,000 intersections are connected with saddle welds in Wonderland

  • Approximately 2,100 butt joint welds where two or more rods intersect on the same plane create the sweeping geometry of the piece

A significant part of Plensa’s work is in the field of large-scale sculpture in public spaces, with installations in cities around the world: in Spain, France, Japan, England, Korea, Germany, Canada, and the USA, to name a few. The Crown Fountain, which was unveiled in Chicago’s Millennium Park in 2004, is one of Plensa’s largest projects and, without doubt, one of the most brilliant. Recent unveilings include: Pacific Soul (2018) in San Diego, USA; Julia (2018) in Madrid, Spain; and Voices (2018) in 30 Hudson Yards, New York, USA.