Donald - Lego, 2023

BrickBoardBuilder  

There is no background. No breathing room, no margin, nowhere to rest the eye: the face fills the entire frame and spills out on all four sides. Brick Board Builder has gone for the tight shot, the one that puts the character at eye level, so close that you no longer see the drawing but the material it is made of.

From a distance, the obvious: the blue cap, the yellow bill, the arched brow, the red bow tie. The most famous duck in the world, recognised in a tenth of a second, already looking like he's about to complain before he has even opened his beak. Up close, it all comes apart. The white of the plumage is no longer a flat area but an accumulation — dozens of different shapes, plates, tiles, discs, technical pieces, set in every direction, with greys and blacks slipped into the hollows to deepen the shadow under the eye and along the cheek.

The bill is the beating heart of the piece. Golden yellows, ambers, oranges, dark reds: colour is stacked here in layers, like a light that grows warmer as it travels down towards the mouth. All around, the blues unfold in four or five distinct shades — cyan, azure, ultramarine, midnight — making the yellow vibrate without ever competing with it. At the bottom, the red arrives like a full stop.

Slow surprises, everywhere. A printed piece, a gear, a Japanese character, a star, a tiny shield: chosen accidents, invisible at first glance, rewarding anyone who steps closer. A work you look at twice, and that changes each time.

Not a single brick was laid to a plan. Every element was chosen by hand, from a stock of second-hand LEGO® bricks arriving loose from all over France and sorted one by one — part of it coming from solidarity-based reuse through the Rejoué association. Pieces with no story, given one back. It is this refusal of the blueprint that gives the work its grain, its irregularity and its identity: it can never be built the same way twice.