Ruben Nieto:
Lego
Rome 41º53'N 12º28'E - oil, enamel, and melted Lego blocks on canvas
12 x 12 inches - 2010
12 x 12 inches - 2010
Lego - Artist Statement
“Most of us have grown up playing with Legos. We learned as kids how to build a house in a playful way. Based on such play, we grew up to inhabit our own home.
“In today’s world, living in large urban environments, we are surrounded by architecture and urbanism. We are often unconscious of this fact because the urban setting is a part of our daily life. For that reason, our environment is transformed into a parallel world, like a Walt Disney Fantasy or a Blade Runner dystopia. In my paintings I try to recreate that parallel world and the related disruption of time and space.
“My compositions are based on aerial views from major cities around the world taken from Google Earth. I select a particular portion of the urban landscape and translate it into my own. As a result, the original view is transformed and still recognizable as an architectural environment.
“In creating opaque, monochromatic backgrounds, I have removed the brushstroke and the gesture from my paintings, creating a feeling of urban alienation and autonomy where the melted pieces of Legos become the gesture itself. I do not merely add the bright color to the surface, but I use color to articulate the very surface itself. The color-cum-surface of my paintings is but one component of a vast planar infinity.
“I drip paint on top of the Legos as a formal reference to Pollock and Abstract Expressionism. Every Lego figure takes its energy from the color ground, and is transformed into a character. I want to immerse the viewer into the world of each painting while at the same time provoking him/her to connect the Legos with their own urban environment in the surfaces and architectural landscapes of my paintings.”
- Ruben Nieto, 2010
Ruben Nieto - Lego gallery portfolio (.pdf, ~2.5MB)
Lego - in Modern Dallas
Ruben Nieto - curriculum vitae (.pdf, 459k)