About Us
News » Talking Continents Press Release
Talking Continents Press Release
For Immediate Release
July 22, 2004
Jacksonville’s “Talking Continents” Featured In Americans For The Arts Public Art Network’s 2004 Year In Review
JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA “Talking Continents” from Jacksonville’s Art in Public Places Program is featured in Americans for the Arts Public Art Network’s (PAN) 2004 Year in Review, a guide highlighting the country’s best public art projects.
“Talking Continents” was selected from a field of 189 entries. The 39 projects featured in the Year in Review were chosen by artist Elle Driscoll and Glenn Harper, editor of Sculpture Magazine. The Year in Review highlights the most successful, innovative, and exciting public art projects in the United States.
“Communities across the country are developing innovative ways to involve artists in the design of public space,” said Robert L. Lynch, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts. “The Year in Review recognizes Jacksonville’s ‘Talking Continents’ as one of the premiere public art projects in the United States for 2004.”
“Talking Continents,” created by Jaume Plensa of Barcelona, Spain, consists of a group of six figurative sculptures cast in fiberglass, internally lit with powerful, colored LEDs. The kneeling figures are installed on top of 30-foot steel poles and placed around the new Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena.
The poles serve as gathering places around the sports and entertainment complex as each is encircled by a bench, and lit from below to correspond with the LEDs of the sculptures. The figures were conceived by the artist as universal symbols of humanity from the world’s inhabited continents, in a sort of supernatural communication with each other. The works are lit beginning at dusk, with a light-sensor mechanism, and are programmed individually to shift colors at different rates, resulting in seemingly-random phasing from color to color and combinations among the figures.
“I wanted to create a reason for people to look up at the sky, which in Jacksonville, is incredible,” said the artist. Plensa, who lives and works in Barcelona, Spain, has exhibited in more than 50 one-man shows in the past 10 years. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris, the Henry Moore Sculpture Trust in Halifax, England, Museo Luigi Lecci in Prato, Italy, and Palais Lichtenstein in Vienna.
His numerous public commissions are located in Auch and Paris, France; Gateshead U.K.; Pistoia, Italy; Tokyo; Jerusalem; Seoul, South Korea; and his most recent in Chicago’s Millenium Park. Plensa’s work is also the subject of a major traveling exhibition which opened at the Arts Club of Chicago in January, 2004 and continues on to the New Orleans Contemporary Art Center and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
“Talking Continents” will be prominently featured in February, 2005 when Jacksonville hosts Superbowl XXXIX at the Sports Complex which includes Alltell Stadium, where the game will take place. For more information on “Talking Continents” and Jacksonville’s Art in Public Places Program, visit www.culturalcouncil.org. PAN is a program of Americans for the Arts designed to provide services to the diverse field of public art and to develop strategies and tools to improve communities through public art.
PAN’s key constituents are public art professionals, visual artists, design professionals, arts organizations, and communities. The Year in Review selections were presented in a program at Public Arts: Civic Catalyst in Washington, DC, in July. For more information about the event, visit www.pARTicipateWeb.org. Those selections are also included in an online presentation, slide set, and CD. These items will be available on Americans for the Arts’ website in the fall at www.AmericansForTheArts.org.
For more information e-mail Contact. Americans for the Arts is the leading nonprofit organization for advancing the arts in America. With offices in Washington, DC, and New York City, it has a record of more than 40 years of service. Americans for the Arts is dedicated to representing and serving local communities and creating opportunities for every American to participate in and appreciate all forms of the arts.
Additional information is available at www.AmericansForTheArts.org.