Artist Jaume Plensa’s monumental sculptures have appeared in public spaces around the world, transforming plazas, parks, and city skylines into places of quiet reflection. Now, the Barcelona-born creative has brought that vision to Montpellier, France, with Mirage, a new exhibition at Carré Sainte-Anne that runs from June 3 through November 1, 2026.
Plensa has spent decades making the human body feel infinite. One of the most recognized artists working in public space today, he builds colossal figures from steel mesh, stacked letters, and cast resin, creating forms that dissolve at their edges, catch light, and radiate intricate shadows that seem to hover between presence and illusion. Mirage gives that vision one of its most compelling stages yet.
The exhibition fills the soaring interior of Carré Sainte-Anne, a deconsecrated 19th-century neo-Gothic church in the heart of Montpellier’s historic Écusson district. Vaulted ceilings and filtered daylight lend the space an almost spiritual atmosphere.
At the center of the nave, two large figures in open steel mesh face one another as if suspended mid-thought. Their skeletal construction allows the surrounding space to breathe through them, projecting delicate networks of line and shadow across the church walls. The effect borders on the spectral, with figures that feel fully present and barely there at once.
Throughout his practice, Plensa has returned to recurring motifs of closed-eyed faces, text-based forms, and contemplative figures. His public sculptures now stand on nearly every continent. Crown Fountain, unveiled in Chicago’s Millennium Park in 2004, remains one of his best-known works. More recently, Water’s Soul (2020) faces Manhattan from Jersey City, while the monumental sculpture Together, unveiled in Venice in 2025, exemplifies his ongoing fascination with introspective human forms. That same visual language appears in The House of Light and Love (2024) in Taipei and now in Mirage at Carré Sainte-Anne.
At Carré Sainte-Anne, Plensa’s sculptures engage directly with the church’s soaring architecture and shifting light. The building does not compete with the work; it completes it. Stripped of its original function but not its atmosphere, the former church heightens the sense of introspection that runs throughout Plensa’s practice, creating a setting where his monumental figures feel both intimate and transcendent.
Mirage arrives during a particularly active period for the artist. His public commission Bengaluru’s Soul debuted at Kempegowda International Airport in India in April 2026, while Materia Interior remains on view through September 2026 at La Cárcel Vieja in Murcia, Spain.
The exhibition remains on view through November 1, 2026, inviting visitors to encounter Plensa’s meditative figures amid the dramatic architecture of Carré Sainte-Anne.
Jaume Plensa’s Mirage transforms Montpellier’s Carré Sainte-Anne, a 19th-century neo-Gothic church, into an immersive environment for his monumental steel mesh figures.
On view through November 1, 2026, the exhibition highlights Plensa’s ongoing exploration of language, identity, and the human form within spaces designed for reflection and stillness.
