Cape Town - No matter where you are in the world, it’s quite likely that you spent hours playing with Lego bricks as a child. The Art Of The Brick, an imaginative art exhibition that features sculptures and wall hangings made entirely of Lego bricks, will make you feel like you never stopped.
US artist Nathan Sawaya used more than a million Lego pieces to create an awe-inspiring exhibition of 80-odd sculptures.
The display is on show at the V&A Waterfront’s Watershed Building. It will run until February 28.
Voted one of the world’s top 10 must-see exhibitions by CNN, the exhibition has already toured cities in North America, Australia, Asia and Europe.
Donovan Everitt, a director of Manic Global, the company responsible for bringing the exhibition here, said that thousands had visited the exhibition since it opened more than a week ago.
“The first four days were extremely busy. Both young and old are lining up to see the exhibition,” he said.
Everitt explained that it took a lot of planning and negotiating to bring the exhibition to our shores as several organisations and people were queuing up to have the rights to the exhibition.
“It’s rated as one of the world’s best exhibitions and we are very proud to be the first ones to bring a showcase of the magnitude to South Africa,” he said.
Getting the exhibition to the country required a team of professionals, including lighting specialists to make sure that each and every piece was perfectly positioned and lit.
Sawaya, a former corporate lawyer turned master of the tiny bricks, is a full-time artist who creates these works for private clients, as well as for the touring exhibition, at his workshops in New York and Los Angeles.
When the Cape Argus visited the exhibition on Monday, exclamations of wonder filled the room as children and adults made their way through the walk-through display.
A must-see is a life-size sculpture titled The Swimmer. Others include a 190x66x41cm sculptural depiction of the famous Renaissance sculpture by Italian sculptor Michelangelo, David, made of 16 349 bricks.
Each piece is titled and comes with a short description that lists the number of bricks used.
There are also perfectly proportioned 3D creations.
Aside from the display, there will also be an interactive activation area consisting of Lego building stations for children and a PlayStation consoles zone.
Tickets for the expo are available at the door and online via computicket.com and cost R140 for adults and R95 for children.
The expo runs every day between 9am and 7pm until February 28.
Cape Argus