On my day trip to Duisburg, the sculptures of Jaume Plensa were among the works I most enjoyed. Looking back through my photographs, I can see a recurring fascination: bodies made from letters, a figure formed from musical notation, and a vast face that seems to hover between a physical object and a drawing in the air. There is plenty to look at, but also room to let your thoughts wander.
The exhibition, Invisible, is at Museum Küppersmühle, where it runs from 26 June to 1 November 2026. It brings together more than 50 sculptures, works on paper and wall drawings made especially for the museum. My photographs capture a small part of that larger presentation, particularly the works in which the human form becomes transparent.
A human presence, built from language
Born in Barcelona in 1955, Plensa has developed a practice that includes sculpture, public installations and work for theatre and opera. One of his best-known public projects is Crown Fountain, unveiled in Chicago’s Millennium Park in 2004. The connection between people and the spaces they inhabit is an important thread in his career.
In the seated figures I photographed, individual letters join together to describe a head, shoulders, arms and bent knees. From a distance, the posture is immediately recognisable. Up close, that coherent body breaks into separate signs. You can look through it, catching the wall, the light and sometimes another visitor between the letters.
That construction gives me an accessible way into the work. Language helps us express who we are, and the words we inherit and exchange become part of our identity. Here, that idea takes physical shape. Each letter has a place in the body, while the spaces between them keep the figure open to everything around it. I find that openness particularly appealing: the sculpture has a clear presence without closing itself off.
A body made of music
The warm, rust-coloured figure introduces another vocabulary. Musical notes, clefs and fragments of staves curve around its head and torso. In the close-up photograph, the familiar symbols become an intricate structure, with lines crossing and bending into the contours of a face.
Music is more than a decorative reference in Plensa’s work. Galerie Lelong describes his use of alphabets and musical notes in relation to poetry, song and the shared human act of producing sound. That background helps explain why these forms feel so appropriate to a human figure. Words and music both allow something internal to reach another person.
For me, the pleasure is also quite immediate. I like how the musical signs remain recognisable while becoming something else. A note is still a note, but it can also become part of a cheek or a shoulder. The figure is silent, yet its entire surface suggests sound.
Invisible Anna
The large suspended head in the silo space is Invisible Anna (2018), identified by the museum as a sculpture made from stainless-steel rods. Its closed eyes and finger held to the lips give the face an expression of quiet concentration.
In my photograph from above, the small visitor near the bottom of the frame reveals its extraordinary scale. The face occupies much of the space, although you can see straight through it. Light catches the fine structure, while a second, darker face appears in the shadow below.
The closer view changes the experience again. What first reads as a calm face becomes a dense network of intersecting lines. The eye moves between the portrait and the construction that makes the portrait possible. I enjoy that shift, especially in photography: a slight change in viewpoint can turn something recognisable into a nearly abstract pattern.
Photographing the space between
The shadows became an important part of my photographs. Beside one of the pale letter figures, its enlarged silhouette spreads across the wall. Elsewhere, warm light picks out individual letters and leaves others in darkness. The sculptures offer the structure; the lighting creates another version of it.
The visitors add something, too. Their presence gives the figures scale and brings everyday movement into these otherwise still compositions. Someone pauses, someone looks closer, someone passes through the frame. In those moments, the sculptures and the people around them seem to belong to the same scene.
What stays with me is how much Plensa can communicate through an open form. Letters, musical signs and thin metal lines are enough to suggest a person, a mood and an inner life. These were works I enjoyed photographing, but the photographs also give me a reason to keep looking. There is still something to discover in the spaces between the lines.
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