Samuel Bey - BRICK

‘BRICK' is a wordless performance centred around a literal and figurative cornerstone of our society: the brick. Clay-red, slightly dusty, solid yet fragile. But above all: full of meaning. As a symbol for a home, for example. The archetype of man’s urge to build a house.

As a young thirty-something, artist Samuel Bey, creator of 'BRICK', is not immune to social pressure and the - increasingly difficult to fulfill - expectation to own or (re)build a house. That required check mark for a "successful" life. It inspired him to work around that, build something else and tear it down again.

Bey shapes "BRICK" by placing own body opposite dozens of pounds of quick-build brick. He juggles, dances and makes live sculptures, using the hollow stone as both totem of and outlet for a silent struggle. Thus, 'BRICK' is also about craftsmanship, as Bey slaloms from virtuoso construction worker to societal shin-kicker, crossing and skirting the classical boundaries of circus performance.

Themes such as mental health and artistic self-development emerge naturally, while Bey questions modern status symbols and reduces them to dust in a tour de force of physical tragicomedy and performance art.

What "BRICK" builds up eventually comes back down. Throughout the piece, tension shimmers and sways between the artist, the bricks, gravity and the audience. Builder and structure flirt non-stop with menace in a primal tale of perseverance - even in the face of absurd opposition.

With "BRICK," Samuel Bey pens a rich, new piece in which a very wide audience can identify with the unspoken in countless ways.