BRIC Installation by Nathalie Du Pasquier for Mutina

Milan-based French artist Nathalie Du Pasquier has collaborated with Mutina on a site-specific installation dedicated to the humble brick, housed within MUT space, ceramic brand’s dedicated exhibition space inside the company headquarters.

Composed of seven structures of various shapes and sizes, the exhibition gives rise to an unexpected landscape that sits somewhere between sculpture and architecture, resembling either giant pawns or small towers. Bricks are a recurring motif throughout Du Pasquier’s painting works, and she uses her solo exhibition at MUT to explore the material in its physical and conceptual essence, as an element linked to the earth and the tradition of ceramics.

BRIC was born from the notion that the brick is an archetypal compositional element: minimal, economical, repeated and adaptable to the widest range of forms. The artist believes the brick is a symbol of connection, and also a work of architecture in its individuality. The artist uses sand to cover the floor of the installation, evoking images of archeological finds, as if the constructions are surfacing from the past or another culture.

“Perforated bricks have this odd characteristic of seeming like buildings when you look at them,” says Du Pasquier. “You can build a modern neighbourhood in miniature by putting some of these bricks together. In the end, they are hives, and we are simply pesky insects.”

Du Pasquier identified different types of brick and turned them over, glazing them with bright colours layered in large format sculptures. Revealing their inner construction, Du Pasquier activates unique perspectives and architectural contrasts between solid and void, highlighted in turn by the bright colours of the glaze. Overturned, the bricks lose their structural virtue and become decorative modules of a pattern that reflects the aesthetic of ceramic tiles produced by Mutina.

“I have built different three-dimensional things; the new aspect of this experience is the almost architectural scale, and the fact that the bricks, being modular, almost lose their three-dimensional quality, and go back to being parts that form a surface,” concludes Du Pasquier.