THE  ART  OF  THE  BRICK®   MAY 4- AUGUST 10

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About Nathan Sawaya: Nathan Sawaya had a promising career as a practicing attorney when he walked away  to become an artist nearly 10 years ago.  Now he no longer negotiates contracts in a boardroom, but instead creates awe-inspiring art exclusively with LEGO bricks. He is a New York based artist who creates works out of some of the most unlikely things. His current museum exhibitions tour the world featuring large-scale sculptures using only toy building blocks. LEGO bricks to be exact. Sawaya has more than 2.5 million colored bricks in his art studio. Sawaya has been featured on some of the leading talk shows and news programs including The Today Show, Late Night with David Letterman, The Colbert Report and CBS Sunday Morning. For more information on Nathan Sawaya visit www.brickartist.com. 

This exhibition is made possible by:
















































Beginning May 4, The Pensacola Museum of Art will host The Art of the Brick®, an exhibition featuring large-scale sculptures created out of iconic LEGO® bricks by New York-based artist Nathan Sawaya. This will mark the first time this extraordinary traveling exhibit has been publicly displayed in the Pensacola area.
    
The Art of the Brick is one of the largest and most popular art exhibits touring the globe. CNN hailed The Art of the Brick as one of the top twelve “must-see exhibitions in the world.”  

“This year alone, we’ve visited Brussels, Singapore and Taiwan,” said Sawaya. “We are thrilled to be bringing this collection to Pensacola, Florida.”    

Like most young kids, Sawaya started playing with LEGO at a young age. But unlike most kids, Sawaya never stopped building, creating and exploring his own imagination. The result has solidified his place in pop culture history and he is making an indelible mark on the art world as well. The award-winning artist has catapulted the iconic LEGO brick into an art medium all its own, transforming this construction toy into awe-inspiring and thought provoking sculptures.   

The centerpiece of Sawaya’s collection of sculptures, as well as arguably his most famous piece of artwork, is entitled Yellow, a LEGO torso of a man ripping open his chest while yellow plastic bricks cascade out of the open chest cavity. Sawaya has made a name for himself by creating out of LEGO exacting replicas of the human form in various states of emotion, including anger, love, depression and joy.   

“I use LEGO bricks as my medium because I enjoy seeing people’s reactions to artwork created from something with which they are familiar. Everyone can relate to it since it is a toy that many children have at home. I want to elevate this simple plaything to a place that it has never been before. The distinct lines. As so often in life, it is a matter of perspective. Up close, the shape of the brick is distinctive. But from a distance, those right angles and distinct lines change to curves,” Sawaya said.