Wen Fang

The Golden Brick:

" Mahjong "

    When traced back to early times, there is a long relationship between bricks and mahjong. Walking down the streets of Beijing, you can hear the voices of mahjong players starting a game, “Let’s build the Great Wall!”

Mahjong is a game of Chinese origin that is usually played by four people with tiles resembling dominoes, bearing various designs. Of 136 tiles, there exist three suits; dots, representing coins; bamboo, representing string holding the coins together; and characters, of which each represents ten thousand coins. The set also contains tiles representing wind (north, south, east, and west) and three colors (red, green, and white), which have the greatest possibility of transforming a mediocre hand into a substantial win.

Mahjong is a considerable part of Chinese lives, as it seems to materialize Chinese wisdom. The value of mahjong pieces are more or less the same. Tiles are drawn, lined up in a row resembling the Great Wall, and discarded until one player wins the round by creating a standard mahjong hand consisting of a certain number of melds. There are many ways to win; thus, the winning hand depends entirely on timing, decisions, and more than anything else the relations with the other players.

In the New Golden Brick: Mahjong, the three traditional suits are replaced by tiles representing "Wealth (dots)", "Food (bamboo)", and "Lust (characters)". The traditional wind and colors pieces are substituted for cultural icons. Most of the time, "Wealth", "Food", and "Lust" are the most important pieces; however, in tricky situations, the wind and color pieces can help your hand to win big…

In some views, the point of playing Mahjong is to display your military science strategies; but, in the end, it’s all just for fun.

136 images printed on cement bricks.

Dimensions: 30 x 14 x 7cm / brick, Edition: 3