EXHIBITION
2018
VENUE
National Gallery of Victoria
YEAR
Escher x Nendo was a groundbreaking survey of the work of Dutch artist MC Escher, in dialogue with spaces designed in collaboration with acclaimed Japanese design studio Nendo. The resulting exhibition reveals the mastery of both practices, bringing together the world of art and contemporary design.
Whilst employed at NGV, Peter King collaborated with the Tokyo based practice to create approximately 1,550 square metres of dramatic black and white scenography, augmented with sophisticated lighting and AV technology. The exhibition included fully immersive environments including significant architectural construction, joinery, showcases, mounts, AV, digital interactives and bespoke lighting.
Peter was engaged across the full duration of the project, from the initial pitching documents, curatorial negotiations with lenders, concept and design development, documentation and project management of construction, through to final installation.
The exhibition design received significant critical acclaim and received multiple design awards, complemented with blockbuster visitation numbers. Peter King led the design development and oversaw the local production of the chandelier sculpture, which was accessioned into the NGV permanent collection at the conclusion of the exhibition.
Exhibition Design: Nendo in collaboration with NGV Exhibition Design
Curators: Cathy Leahy and Ewan McEoin
Photos by Sean Fenessey
Video courtesy of Nendo
Excerpt from Escher x Nendo will surprise, delight and challenge by Sasha Grishin in The Conversation
“A hallmark of a great exhibition, one that revisits a repertoire of world-famous art, is that it allows us to find a new perspective on what we thought we already knew. In this exhibition, we see Escher afresh – not through the eyes of 20th century empiricism, but through those of 21st century digitally liberated design. One of the main challenges that Escher set himself was to replicate three-dimensional form on a two-dimensional surface. His intention was not to completely embrace illusionism and treat the piece of paper like a frame for a window into the world, but to continuously explore the tension between these dimensions. nendo works in reverse. The studio operates in three-dimensional real and digital worlds but wishes to replicate two-dimensional effects.
Throughout the exhibition, there are numerous visual ambushes that subvert our grasp on reality as we are invited to enter an exciting labyrinth of visual ambiguities. Oki Sato’s “icon image” for Escher is a little schematic house design through which the fantastic world of Escher is engaged. This design is replicated in many completely unexpected ways, such as a giant “chandelier” made up of tens of thousands of these tiny houses that becomes a kinetic fabric of vision and a metaphor for the distorting mirror created by Escher.
In another exhibition space, the viewer encounters a house-shaped tunnel, or an illusionistic space made up of these house designs of ever-diminishing sizes, allowing you to be initially physically, and then visually, drawn into an impossible space. This acts as a metaphor for the optical illusions so close to the heart of Escher.
The most impressive of the nendo interventions and one of the most impressive installation designs attempted in any Australian gallery, is a huge space accessible from an elevated platform where scores of these simplified houses have been constructed leading from positive to negative spaces. It is within this installed, completely immersive environment, consisting of improbable constructions, that we encounter some of the classic pieces of Escher.
These immersive environments seduce and intrigue the viewer, constantly leading them into the fantastic imagination of Escher. This is less an exhibition of the prints of Escher than a physical encounter with the world of Escher and the experience of his improbable inventions.
This exhibition is not so much a presentation of the work of Escher, but an interpretation of his art from a very contemporary perspective. It will surprise, delight and challenge the viewer and suggests that, perhaps, this cerebral sombre Dutchman had a dry sense of humour that he hoped would be discovered in posterity.””