Lot Essay
Italian artist Matteo Negri gained international recognition in 2008 with his L’Ego art series. With a semantical hint, the title ‘L’Ego’ signifies ‘Ego’ in Italian. The enlarged Lego blocks symbolise creativity and reflect the artist’s interest in construction. During his artistic creation, Negri reconstructs and rearranges Lego blocks and experiments with their myriad possible combinations. He infuses the object with a set of renewed values. The final structure captures the artist’s strong desire to build and abstractedly represents his sentimentality that goes beyond the physical properties of the initial objects. The bricks no longer represent shape or objectivity, but act as an agent of subjectivity. The artist utilises a chromed base as a mirror to reflect the Lego structural space infinitely, which confronts the viewers with a subjective experience and stimulates them to question about the self. In this wall-hanged sculpture, Negri deepens his relationship with architecture by creatively integrating the concepts of the Dutch post-impressionist Mondrian with the construction of Danish Lego bricks to create geometric harmony.