Spatial Minimalism: nendo feature for Aesthetica
When the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, planned to stage a major exhibition of work by MC Escher in 2018, the cutting-edge Japanese design studio Nendo, with its pared-back but playful aesthetic, proved the perfect match for the Dutch graphic artist, known for mathematical tricks of the eye. However, the resulting collaboration, titled Escher X nendo | Between Two Worlds, went far beyond what the cura- tors had imagined. Nendo’s founder Oki Sato (b. 1977) took the simple form of a house and repeated it in myriad ways.
Flow, 2017. © nendo
It was there when visitors entered, a dramatic interlocking pattern on monochrome wallpaper. It followed in the shape of a tunnel through which audiences moved from one sec- tion of the show to another, and a seating area from which to contemplate artworks on the walls. Other houses existed as fragmented black frames, which, only at certain angles, appeared to merge into a whole. Finally, a chandelier made of 55,000 tiny houses threw geometric shadows into every edge of the room, expanding the definition of the gallery.
“Sato understood from the outset that a ‘collaboration’ with MC Escher could allow a move outward – beyond the paper and the frame, beyond the wall and the floor – to manifest the thematic concerns and inspirations encountered within Escher’s work – sensorial, spatial and architectural,” writes NGV’s director, Tony Ellwood, in the foreword to a new monograph of the studio’s work since 2016, published by Phaidon. “Sato looped iconography and spatial experience in order to subtly question traditional notions of the relation- ship between art and design.”
At a time when many artworks are visible in digital reproduction at a mere click, Nendo’s approach to exhibition design asserts the preeminence of the gallery or museum as a site for unique physical encounters. Nendo’s relationship with NGV dates back to 2016, when Ellwood came across the studio’s installation 50 Manga Chairs at Friedman Benda, New York, and snapped up all 50 for the gallery’s collection. With a mirrored finish, each Manga chair was inspired by graphic elements taken from the iconic Japanese comics, from speech bubbles to lines indicating characters’ movements, sweat and tears. Sato has described Escher’s work as residing somewhere “between the possible and the impossible” and the same could be said of these chairs. Like optical illusions, the pieces toy with per- spectives, conflate dimensions and subvert our preconcep- tions about how objects or materials behave…
