Visual Poetry in "Art in America," Part 2

via Bob Grumman's po-X-cetera:

I don't know anything about James Plensa but like his piece. If there are words in it, I haven't been able to make them out, so I'd call the work a textual sculpture. I haven't worked out any theory as to why the letters are in it--a person as a vaccuum disguised by a layer of language? Is the statue based on some canonical statue? It reminds me of one, I think--ever so vaguely.