Held at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Melbourne, Australia, design studio nendo has created an immersive exhibition space presenting the work of Dutch artist M.C. Escher.
Commissioned by NGV to bring the work of Escher into dialogue with nendo, the exhibition titled Between Two Worlds features 157 prints and drawings by Escher alongside an immersive space that spans nine rooms.
“Escher’s artistic practice, due to its complex play with space, logic and mathematics, has had an indelible impact on architecture and design for many generations,” said Tony Ellwood AM, Director, NGV. “This rich legacy was the catalyst for the NGV to conceptualize the idea of pairing Escher with nendo.”
World-renowned for his impossible constructions Lithographs, M.C. Escher utilized mathematics, architecture and perspective to create optical illusion artworks in various mediums.
Taking inspiration from Escher’s work, nendo has designed the exhibition in a way that enables visitors to experience Escher’s work and ideas in an immersive way and has also devised a motif for the exhibition in the form of a house.
“Escher’s logical, math-based ideas and interests have inspired nendo’s work process and served as a base for the creation of this exhibition design and new collection of works,” said nendo Chief Designer and Founder Oki Sato. “The different installations vary in scale and in spatial impact, enabling the visitor to experience Escher’s world in a very physical way. It’s as if they are walking inside Escher’s mind, but seeing the exhibition through their own eyes.”
With animation projected onto the floor that “symbolises these ‘seeds’ of ideas that later into art and spatial installations” leading the visitors to the first gallery of the exhibition, Escher’s early work is showcased with small houses making up a white bench.
In the next room, patterns of houses have been laid out symmetrically on the floor, alongside a few of Escher’s artworks and small geometric houses placed on the walls of the gallery.
Among the biggest gallery of the exhibition, visitors are then lead to a 60-metre-long and six-metre-high gallery filled with rows of black and white houses.
Proceeding to the next gallery, metal pipes that utilize perspective and optical illusions form the outline of houses and Escher’s artworks are mounted throughout.
In the next gallery, a circular room housing 17 of Escher’s artwork is complemented by a chandelier made up of 55,000 small black and white houses placed in the centre.
For the final gallery, nendo has designed a path that represents Escher’s final print before death called Snakes.
To learn more about the Between Two Worlds exhibition, click the link below.
