The first showing of M.C.Escher in Finland is now at the Amos art gallery. With a film and most of Eschers best loved wood cuttings and prints on show it is a real treat. What I love about Escher is his play with dimensions. He shows with his illusions on the paper the difference between reality and its representation and he is able to incorporate the dimension of time into his pictures by defying reality, for example ascending and descending with its infinite stair loop.

Gombrich in his seminal book Art and Illusion showed how art moved from portraying reality ‘as it was’ to ‘how it appears’ and then in turn with the invention of photography and film moved away from the format of representation. But Escher by using the rules of perspective moves us to see the tricks behind the portrayal of space in Western art. He is playing both with us and with reality, and this makes him special indeed singular in the  art world.

I think there is much to learn from and be inspired by the ideas and implict demonstration by Escher of the inferiority of one sense alone in the understanding of space and I wish more of that thinking, that type of questioning, was present in our design culture at the moment.