I’ve always been into art that messes with your sense of what’s real. The kind that slips reality sideways, makes it feel elastic, slightly off, like it could rearrange itself at any moment. That’s probably why M. C. Escher hit so hard early on.
Escher’s images don’t just depict impossible worlds — they calmly insist on them. Staircases loop endlessly, buildings refuse gravity, and perspective becomes something you negotiate rather than trust. What’s wild is how grounded it all feels. His illusions come from intense observation, from looking closely at the rules of the world and then bending them until they reveal something stranger underneath. Escher doesn’t reject reality — he exposes how weird and wonderful it already is. A new exhibition Between Order and Chaos: André Kertész and M. C. Escher at the Bruce Silverstein Gallery looks at two artists who, by playing and distorting reality, help us see the world in a different way.
This exhibition puts Escher in dialogue with André Kertész, a pairing that feels unexpected but instantly clicks. Kertész, working with a camera rather than woodblocks and ink, explored similar ideas through photographs that quietly disrupt how we see. Reflections fracture bodies, angles skew space, shadows behave like characters of their own. Nothing is forced — the distortion arrives softly, almost accidentally.
