MC Escher was apparently a bad student. He failed the second grade. He flunked multiple subjects while studying architecture. It is funny, then, that his mind-bending works – the impossible buildings; the complex transitioning shapes – adorn the walls of classrooms the world over.
My school was no different. In geography you could either pay attention, or you could look at Escher looking at himself reflected in an orb. In maths I spent more time than I should have staring at the print of birds flying from one side to another, black and white fading seamlessly, fields turning to sky.
This picture, I now know, is called Day and Night (1938); and it is mounted behind me as I sit in a split-level room in the middle of the National Gallery of Victoria’s newest exhibition.
Escher x Nendo: Between Two Worlds features more than 160 pieces of the Dutch artist’s work, on loan from Netherlands’ Gemeentemuseum, and complemented by installations from the award-winning Japanese design studio Nendo. Every single Escher piece feels so familiar that being in their presence is strangely comforting.
It’s not just Escher’s most famous works on display, but myriad drafts that demonstrate his meticulous attention to detail. Surrounded by them, I ask the director of the Gemeentemuseum, Benno Temple, why he thinks Escher is so beloved. He doesn’t hesitate: it’s because of the classrooms.
“From teenager age onwards you more or less know a little of his work,” he says. For many people this is “one of the first art experiences in their lives”, which makes it memorable. “Like a first kiss,” Temple says, then laughs. “Very dramatic.”
If the NGV had just gathered a bunch of MC Escher prints together and slapped the art up in any old order, many of us would still have walked away happy. So how does Nendo fit into the picture? And why have a collaboration at all?
I walked in knowing that the exhibition would be “immersive”, and imagined upside down staircases and Instagram-fodder; something more like virtual reality than a traditional exhibition. “Immersive”, I thought, meant bringing some of Escher’s impossible scenes to life on a large scale.
Instead, Between Two Worlds plunges you not into Escher’s artworks, but into his mind and obsessions.
The exhibition isn’t neatly divided into themes or eras; it feels more like a series of moods and focuses. One room concentrates on reflections, echoed not just through the artwork featured, but through the design of the room itself. On the right, text explains the idea behind one of the installations; on the left, this text is mirrored. Along both walls run a deceptively simple repeated motif of houses – when you take a closer look, however, you see the effect is achieved through a complex network of lines, mirrors and lights.
In the centre of the room are three of Escher’s well-known works: Rippled surface (1950), Three worlds (1955), and Puddle (1952). All are of aquatic scenes, viewed from above – and so they are presented on the horizontal plane. To get a proper look, you have to lean over and peer down.
This room perhaps is the best demonstration of why Nendo make such a good choice for an Escher collaboration. The 80-strong design studio led by its founder, Oki Sato, works across furniture, architecture and objects; they weren’t brought in as exhibition designers, but as artists.
They created the original installation that runs along the walls, and it was Sato who suggested the prints be laid out as though it were the surface of water. “I felt that is how Escher would want it placed,” he tells me.
“If I was the exhibition designer it would have been so easy, because I’d just design a stage for Escher and that’s it. But in this case the museum asked me to be a collaborator. Trying to find a good balance between my work and Escher’s work was the biggest challenge.”
His respect for Escher is clear. “It was very difficult because it is a collaboration – but [in this case] you cannot discuss things with your collaborator. So it’s about looking behind what he was thinking, and looking thoroughly through the process,” Sato explains. “In the end it feels like I had a nice long chat with Escher and feel like we’re sort of good friends.” He laughs: “I don’t know how he feels – at least I feel it that way.”
The exhibition itself does feel like a conversation. Escher’s work lays the groundwork and sets the topic, and Nendo responds, both through the design of each gallery and through original installations.
In one room it initially seems as though Escher’s work is mounted on a series of poles or on a mirrored wall; as you walk a bit further however, the poles come together to form the (now familiar) outline of a house.
In another, Escher’s work lines the walls while in the centre Nendo has created a “chandelier”, made up of thousands upon thousands of tiny die-cast houses. Once again, all is not as it seems; follow around the circumference, and when you get to just the right spot a giant, dark house is revealed at the centre.
Escher’s work, alone, is worth the visit. Up close, you can appreciate his detail, and also see how much humour is contained within it. But the collaboration with Nendo gives the work additional depth, and adds a new dimension – something the perspective-obsessed artist himself would surely have loved.
• Escher x Nendo: Between Two Worlds is open at the NGV, Melbourne until 7 April 2019
