in News | 04 APR 18

M.C. Escher’s Iconic Illusory Landscapes Come to New York

An extensive exhibition of the graphic artist’s optical puzzles will be further enhanced by ‘immersive photo booths’

in News | 04 APR 18

M.C. Escher, Stars, 1948. Courtesy: The M.C. Escher Company

A major exhibition of over 200 works by M.C. Escher is coming to New York this summer. The show will chart the Dutch graphic artist’s early landscapes of the Italian countryside from the 1920s, his increasing interest in tesselations after a visit to the Alhambra in Granada, flowing into the optical illusions that he is famous for.

M.C. Escher, Belvedere, 1958. Courtesy: The M.C. Escher Company

‘Escher. The Exhibition & Experience’ has been organized by the Italian exhibitions producer Arthemisia and the M.C. Escher Foundation. Escher, who passed away in 1972, is well known for his mathematically-inflected, precise drawings of impossible staircases and paradoxical spaces, in which chessboards might blur with tesselated cityscapes. The exhibition seeks to bring these even further to life with ‘immersive photo booths’ using distorting mirrors to recreate Escher’s environments.

M.C. Escher, Relativity, 1953. Courtesy: The M.C. Escher Company

Curators Mark Veldhuysen and Federico Giudiceandrea commented: ‘Escher was a singular artistic visionary, whose works still beguile and entrance wherever they are seen.’

‘Escher. The Exhibition & Experience’ will be on view at Industry City, Brooklyn, from 8 June 2018 until 3 February 2019. And don’t miss George Pendle from the frieze archive writing on Escher’s artworks and the enduring influence of the physicist and mathematician Roger Penrose.

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