MICHAEL POLUBIEC

In Brick by Brick, the artist reimagines one of architecture’s most fundamental units, the brick, as both object and metaphor. The installation presents a set of slip-cast ceramic bricks suspended vertically, removed from utilitarian use, each offered as an object of aesthetic contemplation.

For Polubiec, the ceramic object, exemplified by the brick, stands at the threshold between architecture and geology. It is a fragment of earthen material shaped to the scale of the human hand and multiplied to build shelter, cities, and civilizations. By isolating the brick, the artist draws attention to its double nature: born of geological process yet central to human design. Taken together, the installation offers a vision of architecture returning to its mineral origins, where geological process and human design intersect across vast expanses of time. The work becomes a meditation on the continuous cycle between the natural and the constructed, the base unit and the transcendent.

The title Brick by Brick recalls the beginning act of building, a metaphor for striving toward something larger than oneself. Each brick marks a step in that process—incremental and deliberate. The project also serves as a personal metaphor: it is Polubiec’s first major work developed in his own studio following his formal training in craft and design, marking the start of a new chapter for his practice and career.