Blue Fear - Lego

The title is a play on words, and the artwork takes it literally. “Blue fear”: Mickey, mouth wide open, eyes wide, hand raised in front of him, backs away from something we will never see. And all around him, blue.

The composition does half the work. The character is pushed against the right edge, cropped by the frame: one ear and half his body remain out of shot. The entire left side is empty, a smooth sky blue, without a single brick. That is where the danger lies, precisely where there is nothing to see. Brick Board Builder leaves viewers to imagine what frightens the world’s most famous mouse so much.

The Mickey chosen is the original one, from the earliest black-and-white cartoons. Deep black for the ears and body, white for the face and glove, and a whole range of grays for the two-button shorts and large round shoe. Only one color breaks the monotony: the red of the tongue, placed at the center of the scream. The eye keeps returning to it.

Up close, each area has its own texture. The black is worked tone on tone, with pieces revealed only by grazing light. The white of the face combines smooth tiles, round plates, and curved pieces that follow the rounded shape of the cheek. The gray of the shoe, meanwhile, looks like exposed machinery: gears, racks, and technical elements. There is also a small chain hanging from the glove, an orange tip placed on the cheek, and a few printed tiles scattered here and there.

Mickey will soon be one hundred years old; the bricks that make him up have also already lived a life. Brick Board Builder works exclusively with reused LEGO® bricks, collected in bulk from all over France, notably through the Rejoué solidarity association, then cleaned and sorted one by one. He assembles them by hand, without a predefined plan: Peur Bleue can never be recreated identically.

A unique, numbered piece, bearing the artist’s plaque and supplied with its certificate of authenticity.