Starting 23 October and for five years, Planta – a space for the confluence of art and industry, located in the aggregate quarry of the Sorigué group in Balaguer (Lleida) – is home to Double Bind, an installation by the artist Juan Muñoz (1953–2001). Created in 2001 for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in London, the masterwork of the Madrid-born sculptor who died a few months after its inauguration, is on display for the frist time in Spain, and for the third time ever, after a 2015 stint at Hangar Bicocca in Milan. Also hidden in this unique and changing environment, amid gravel mountains and olive fields, is a pavilion sheltering three monumental pictorial works of Anselm Kiefer and a sculpture by Antony Gormley, and also a Spanish Civil War bunker with an impressive video by Bill Viola, while two giant heads by Antonio López have been placed out in the open.
Promoted by the company Sorigué and its foundation, Planta opens to the public with Double Bind, and for its collection of 450 artworks a building will be raised, designed by Ábalos + Sentkiewcz. Construction is to begin in 2018.
Formerly a factory where concrete keystones were made, an old industrial shed with a pitched roof has been transformed specifically to reproduce Herzog & de Meuron’s Turbine Hall, with a 40-meter-long ramp leading to the 2,000-square-meter, 100-meter-long, 20-meter-wide, 18-meter-tall art installation. Adapted to this space by Juan Muñoz’s daughter, Lucía, the complex Double Bind is distributed on three levels, among which only the lower one is passable, flooded with darkness. From here on the visitor – looking in the direction of the intermediate level – is invited to search and visually course along the openings in the ceiling inhabited by disturbing human figures, with elements made of polyester resin, fiberglass, cloth, natural pigments, and wood. The silence is interrupted by the mechanical movement of two empty elevators ascending to the upper level, where an optic landscape is shown.
Work is being done in other installations slated to occupy Planta, with pieces by artists like William Kentridge, Chiharu Shiota, and Wim Wenders.
