THE PLACE TO BE
A CLEAR HEAD: Jaume Plensa’s Mar Whispering guards the lobby of the At Six hotel, newly opened in Stockholm.
ANDY LIFFNER
CARVED FROM striated marble, the sculpture does not so much furnish the staircase as emerge from its center, the rectilinear lines of the stone steps softening into the gently elongated curves of a woman’s head. The Catalan artist Jaume Plensa has always been interested in how a sculpture or installation ills a space with its mass and energy, but for this piece, entitled Mar Whispering, the space in question is not a gallery or grand public square. It’s a hotel lobby. And at least some of the energy it generates is redefining the relationship between art and hotels.