Just Right (2020) is one of Ricardo Brey’s sculptural assemblages housed inside unfolding archival boxes. These boxes open to reveal dynamic collections of objects and miniature sculptures, each one its own unique self-contained thematic universe. Upon opening, Just Right presents metal circles with spheres of various materials—reminiscent of mechanical models of the Solar System called orreries—sitting atop a cast of a tortoise shell filled with small artifacts like broken pieces of ceramic and a broken carpenter’s ruler. The shell rests atop two folding leporello books. Rather than striving to convey a singular message or being confined to any one discrete theme, Brey’s boxes are intended to be open to a multitude of interpretations, unique to experience of each viewer.

Brey considers his boxes “as individual psychological profiles. If you go to an anthropological museum and see flint sharpened by a prehistoric man, that tiny shard tells you volumes about who he was, and ultimately, who we are as human beings. Many artefacts were made to be beautiful for no functional purpose at all—proof of our need for beauty. We are, in this sense, the same as we were five thousand years ago.”