“Art makes better humans.
Art is necessary in understanding
the world and art makes people happy.
Undeniably, art is not optional.”
– Nathan Sawaya
Who doesn’t know the little Lego-bricks? I think almost everyone will have played with them.
I knew already for some time that there would be an exhibition about Lego nearby, but I had no real details about it. As it was about Lego, my curiosity was triggered and I was looking forward to go this exhibition. Some weeks ago I got the details on the exhibition.
The exhibition would be in The Expo Amsterdam, where I have to exhibitions before. Displayed would be pieces of art made of Lego-bricks created by Nathan Sawaya.
Nathan Sawaya has already been working with Lego since he was a young boy and what was at first a hobby, something to help him relax, he is now an artist working with Lego. He creates 2D and 3D objects with Lego. Some are small, some are big…. and some are huge!!!
I already knew that Marissa and Sanne would be visiting me this weekend, so I asked them if they would like to visit with me this exhibition and both of them were right away very interested. Sanne is always interested in art and Marissa has played with Lego when she was younger (why am I not surprised).
So this morning we travelled by train and metro to the Expo Amsterdam, which is just a little walk away from the railroad station Amsterdam Zuid.
I can only try to imagine how long it must have taken to build the bigger ones. And then we are not even talking about number of Lego-bricks that were used. For the dinosaur around 88.000 bricks were needed.
I was surprised while processing the pictures I made later at home…
At the exhibition the statues had a real 3D feeling, even for me with very limited depth in my sight. But it feels that the 3D effect is almost gone on the pictures. Wonder what is causing that.
Also the shadow of the bricks is having a negative effect I think (and I didn’t use a flash, at least not all the time… even turning the flash to the ceiling didn’t work really. So I stopped using the flash).
And (which is explainable) there has to be some distance to the object or else the details will get lost and the separate bricks get really visible.
Later, when I have more time, I will try if I can reach with some deeper going processing of the pictures a better result.
Anyway, I had a very nice day and it was great fun to visit the exhibition together with Marissa and Sanne. I bought two books: One about the exhibition and the other about the works of Nathan Sawaya. Always nice to have something to remember the nice day.
And it was of course nice to introduce on our way home Marissa to the wonders of Starbucks :-).
Below some more pictures that I made today.