December 11, 2018 / Johnny / Comments Off on Nendo Channels MC Escher in New Immersive Installation
Oki Sato and his design firm Nendo have created an immersive installation that spans across nine display areas within The National Gallery of Victoria, in Melbourne. The spaces serve as a frame to compliment, and at times contrast with, 157 prints and drawings by the renowned Dutch graphic artist M. C. Escher.
The floor of the 17 meter long corridor at the entrance of the exhibition is illuminated with a floor-projected animation
Born from the concept of creating a space for Escher, the simple shape of a house serves as a leading motif in the exhibition. And its role shifts between practical and conceptual, at times serving as seating while at other times heightening anticipation as visitors cross through pathways.
And as the title of the exhibition “Between Two Worlds” implies, a conscious decision was made to focus on the differences between Escher and Nendo. “For example, Escher expresses three-dimensional ideas in two-dimensional techniques while Nendo does the opposite.” The exhibition opened in early December and runs through April 7, 2019.Hopefully it will make it’s way to other cities as well!
The first gallery of the exhibition shows Escher’s early and less familiar works. To express the idea of Escher’s formative years and the process of finding his style as an artist, knee-high house shapes gradually emerge out of the rectangular bench. The largest gallery shows Escher’s research around the subject of “regular division of the plane”. Most of the pieces were placed in houses or between them. When visitors move along this space, they walk “inside” of black exterior and white interior houses, but suddenly find themselves walking on the “outside” of white exterior and black interior houses; a transition that is reminiscent of the more elaborated regular plane divisions.Works that focus on extreme perspectives and the paradox of optical illusions have inspired the design of this gallery. Escher’s artworks are scattered and mounted, appearing to be floating in the space. When viewed from a specific perspective, a group of black pipes visually overlap and create a house shape motif. A gallery space dedicated completely to Escher’s last print before his death, Snakes (1969). A white serpentine path was cut out of a black room. Inspired by the mathematical accuracy of the artwork, the curves of the path are based on even angles and tangency following the carefully calculated principle of Escher’s work. A 21 meter-long house-shaped corridor is placed in a connecting pathway between two galleries.A round room designed to hold 17 of Escher’s famous artworks. In the center of the space suspends from the ceiling a 5 meter in diameter chandelier object. Made of more than 55,000 small flat black and white houses, the chandelier reveals in its center a floating large shadow-like house, which is made from a change in the color of the houses.
