‘The Art Of The Brick’ shows art from Lego in Brussels (Brussels)
Like most children, Nathan Sawaya started playing with Lego at a very young age. Only: he never stopped. “I got my first box when I was five years old. After I built what was written on the box, I thought, wouldn’t it be fun to build something else with it too? You don’t necessarily have to build that which becomes design?”
It turned out to be the start of a long and successful between the blocks. But first he had to get an education from his parents. “I went to law school and found a job in an office. But when I came home in the evening, I continued to play with my Lego. The blocks have changed my life: from lawyer between files in an office building to artist. Not with marble paint, but with blocks. That transformation Lego has brought to my life is often a theme of what I build.”
Bob Dylan
This is evident from the exhibition, which contains more than a hundred creations by Sawaya. With each work there is not only a word of explanation, but also the dimensions and the number of blocks he had to use to build a sculpture. A cello: 7,695 blocks. A large pencil that writes the word ‘yes’: 9,800 blocks. A knot: ‘only’ 1,240 blocks, but a difficult shape to make. A little further on you walk through a portrait gallery: Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Andy Warhol are immediately identified. There is also one abstract ‘block painting’ in between. At least, that’s what we thought. “Take a step back, take a picture and see what happens”, says Mario Iacampo, organizer of the expo. And truly: suddenly a face pops up. “A portrait of his wife.”
Mona Lisa
Taking a little distance does help, especially with the artworks that Sawaya imitates. There’s ‘The Starry Night’ by Van Gogh, Hokusai’s famous wave, Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Up close we don’t see her famous smile at all. Take some distance and details shown. Klimt’s ‘Kiss’ and Munch’s ‘Scream’ become solid 3D structures in his version. Sawaya releases Munch’s figure from the canvas.
There are also a number of statues from Classical Antiquity on display in cube form. “With the Venus de Milo (18,483 blocks), the most difficult aspect was getting the fall of the folds in her dress right. I had two days of work on the statue of Emperor Augustus for the feet and the base plate alone.”
T-Rex
The largest building in the exhibition is the skeleton of a dinosaur: a T-rex. No less than 80,020 blocks. Five meters long, thanks to its swishing tail. “Built especially for the children who visit my exhibitions. I worked on it all summer and it almost drove me crazy.”
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“There are more artists who work with Lego,” says organizer Mario Iacampo. “But the unique thing about Nathan is that he can put so much expression and emotion in his constructions. Not easy with an angular block, because he leaves them undisturbed. He doesn’t cut off pieces, but he uses the cubes as they are.”
The fact that the exhibition can appeal to many people was apparent from the previous passage, ten years ago in Brussels. Then 150,000 visitors showed up. “Sawaya is already working on the next exhibition,” says Iacampo. He has visited five continents with a photographer. He has been to the North and South Poles, to the Serengeti… He is going to replicate the animals he saw there and show them against the background of the photographer’s images.”
‘The Art of the Brick’, Grote Markt 5 in Brussels. A visit about an hour. Adults pay 15 euros, children between 4 and 17 years 11 euros. Info and tickets: www.theartofthebrickexpo.com/brussels