Unfolding the realms of peace and disruption, right and left, opposites and harmony, Between Order and Chaoshighlights the intertwined disciplines of two independent artists. The exhibition features vintage photographs from the camerawork of André Kertész and original prints by M. C. Escher — the two come together synonymously. The collection is on view at Bruce Silverstein Gallery in New York City through March 21. The selection of works serves as an extension of each artist’s inspection of perception, geometry, and visual illusions. While both differ, they collaborate to expand into a blend of structure and transformation.
As artists, Kertész and Escher’s works draw from the depths of lived experiences, not just as artists, but as nomads of resistance toward normative artistic movements. Kertész’s earlier works explore unconventional camera angles while bridging distinctive blends of formal rigor, subtle emotions, and witty observations. For Escher, prints took on sharper geometric and illusionary logic with the folding and inversion of worlds and images back onto themselves.
Escher’s work blends intricate realism with fantasy as the boundaries between art and science tense and break. In experimentation, the perception, spatial distortion, and the instability of order and chaos are revealed. Isolated patterns of ripples, recursive spaces, and reflections balance together, opening up architectural possibilities into inconceivable and disorienting constructions. In Escher’s piece, “Relativity”(1953), order descends the staircase of chaos fracturing into multiple realities — ultimately collapsing — paradoxically embracing the impossibility between gravity and architecture as perceptions vary. Through his geometrical introspection, Escher reveals the seductiveness of symmetry that meditates on the fragility of our sense of reality.
In contrast, Kertész’s work reflects his own displacement within the art community as his photography centers around distortions, reflections, and fleeting moments. Through his lens, the world remains still as it becomes reorganized into uncanny perspectives to reveal the subtle chaos of the world. In his series titled Distortions, which consists of over 200 photographs, Kertész used fun house style mirrors to capture and warp the human body to reveal its humorous, yet surreal nature, all while questioning identity and the instability of the body. As a result, his lens serves as a tool for him to sculpt and bend reality through the reflection of the body, rather than simply to capture or record.
In his later works, Kertész’s series titled New York Period consists of multi-work collections spanning various decades during his time in NYC. These works capture urban stillness as shadows and oblique viewpoints reveal architectural order. Each piece reflects Kertész’s own displacement and emotional distance from the American art scene as the city’s structures — the lines, shadows, and facades — express the invisibility within the city’s scale.
Together, each artist challenges the tensions between structure and instability and perception and misperception while revealing the desire for order and the inevitability of chaos. While their artistic mediums contrast, both artists’ works challenge our perceptions while capturing visual disruptions to do so. For Escher and Kertész, the space between chaos and order emerges as an exploration of reality and imagination where logic and unconventionality collide.
