Hitting the Bricks at Art Basel Miami Beach With Maserati and Artist Joseph Leroux

At first glance, it may seem as
if the driver of this brand-new Maserati Levante SQ4 GranSport has
collided with one of Miami Beach’s distinctive white walls. But
this is not the case. 

Rather, every one of the nearly
700 jumbled bricks surrounding the vehicle is a painstakingly
produced piece of art, each individually hand-painted and uniquely
marked by Philadelphia-based artist Joseph Leroux, who was
commissioned by the auto company to conceive a work of art around
the Maserati Levante during Art Basel Miami Beach. Earlier this
week, the installation debuted at Pulse Miami, one of several art
fairs taking place this week.   

“The pattern that you’re seeing
on the surface of the white bricks is each side being branded, one
at a time,” explained Leroux, who variously applied a piping hot,
custom-built branding iron to give each block its own look. “No two
are exactly the same, but when you put them together they evoke an
aura of distress.”

Prominently displayed at the
entrance to the Pulse Miami art fair, the first-ever Maserati SUV,
meanwhile, appears to champion over the pile of bricks beneath it,
as though it were in action. The artist noted that the intended
effect was, fittingly, to convey a sense of action, power, and
mystery.

The Maserati installation is
Leroux’s first collaboration with any automaker. But the same
bricks have appeared before in different places and different
assemblages, often in conjunction with the artist’s series of
paintings, titled “The Bluffs.” To create them, Leroux fabricated
almost 1,000 of the medium-density fiberwood blocks over a period
of eight months, painted each one stark white, then branded them to
superimpose an overall nostalgic, yet distressed
look. 

“I love the idea that as the
[bricks piece] travels, it will never be the same thing twice,”
Leroux said. “It will react to whatever its environment
is.” 

For the artist, the decision to
use the bricks as his medium came naturally, and nods to an earlier
time in his career. “I worked in construction for a long time, so I
was thinking about somebody laying these bricks, all day every
day, and then they become either walkways or buildings,” he
said. 

One benefit of the bricks is
their versatility. “As I shift the piece, it can be built into
numerous architectural components that are based on what space I’m
in, or what object I’m going to show them with,” noted Leroux, who
also runs Bertrand Productions, an up-and-coming contemporary art gallery in
Philadelphia. 

Leroux typically pairs the
bricks with paintings or sculptures that feature similar line work.
At Pulse, for instance, the artist has separately assembled another
stack of the bricks inside the show. The pavers are piled
underneath a painting of his titled The Bluffs:
Peacock, which subtly depicts firefighters battling a car
fire.

The artwork is based on a
historic photograph from the 1960s that Leroux has digitally
manipulated and processed to the point of obfuscation. “You’re not
quite sure what’s going on in the image, but it’s ominous and
confusing,” he said. 

So far, Leroux said the bricks
installation outside the show is helping to draw even more
attention to the dazzling blue Maserati Levante, further noting the
collective power of the installation’s building blocks. “[The brick
is] this very simple
object, but when you have enough of them, you can make something
that’s greater than the sum of its parts,” said
Leroux. 

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Maserati and Artist Joseph Leroux appeared first on artnet
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