There are a few weeks left to see Escher the Exhibition and Experience in Industry City, Brooklyn. The exhibition consists of over 200 original works ranging from lithographs of the Italian landscape that Maurits Cornelis Escher made early in his career to his later and most well-known pieces such as Waterfall, Metamorphoses, Drawing Hands, and numerous tessellations and transformation prints. The exhibition includes wood engravings, woodcuts, mezzotints, and lithographs. Commissioned illustration work in wood engraving is included throughout the exhibition and includes bookplates, cards, and book illustrations. Sprinkled between the print-filled rooms are interactive installations that invite viewers to play in physical spaces built to skew our perceptions. They’re fun, but the real splendor of the exhibit is in the prints themselves.
It’s always an eye-opener to see works in real life that I have already been exposed to through reproductions in textbooks and other mass-produced material goods. In original print after print, the execution of Escher’s work is so masterful that the craftsmanship itself adds to the unreality of the imagery. There is nothing like seeing impressions from the original matrix as the artist intended, in the original and proper scale, with the intentional ink surface, paper texture, subtleties of color, and the artist’s signature penciled in his own hand saying, “I was here”.
The exhibition runs through February 3rd, 2019.
34 – 34th Street, Building 6, 2nd Floor, Brooklyn NY 11232
You can read more about the exhibit and M. C. Escher’s life and works here:
https://www.eschernyc.com/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI14X20afs3wIVgYzICh0aQgdEEAAYASAAEgJke_D_BwE
and here:
