Street Sculpture Route II: 06. Islands

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Route · Subcategory: Street sculpture II · Year: 1995 · Authors: Jaume Plensa

This ingenious and attractive work was created by the Catalan artist Jaume Plensa in 1995 for the II Street Sculpture Exhibition of the city.

It consists of a set of 73 black aluminium, methacrylate and neon boxes, suspended by steel cables from the branches of large trees. The contrast produced between the dense and chaotic foliage of nature and the regular boxes, placed by means of a random arrangement but within their own order, is striking.

The work can be read in two ways depending on the time of day or night it is viewed. In natural light, the boxes, without being lit, seem almost ghostly objects, becoming entities suspended in time or space, and can be confused with the tree branches. At night, on the other hand, with their own illumination, they allow reading a text contained in each box, with names that take us back to very influential figures in the artistic world.

The ensemble is a true symbiosis between art and public space, resulting in an imaginative artistic proposal presented not as a physical form to fill space, but as a source of energy and vibration that emanates expanding towards infinity.

The artwork was installed from its inauguration in 1995 on the last trees of the Rambla, before it flows into Anaga Avenue; and remained there until it was dismantled due to pruning and disappearance of some of these laurels. "Islas" was reinstalled in March 2023 on the José Blasco promenade in García Sanabria Park.

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