MCE Dream Deconstructed & Rebuilt

»Review«

Escher’s “Dream” structure undergoes comprehensive architectural house flipping here, while also experiencing a shift in perspective. We move away from the crypt-like space with the mantis perched on the laid-out bishop, toward a wall with a porthole-shaped opening that provides a view of a pharaoh dominating the night sky in an inner courtyard. Geographically, we shift from (Western) European social space to North African social space, though the secularized theme of religious power remains, even as the form of “divine vicegerency on Earth” shifts.

Escher’s prominent clear vault structure above the columns is essentially duplicated and roughly reconstructed as the lower half of a wall in mirrored form, creating a large oval aperture. The masonry has been slightly distorted so that close inspection creates an impression of the unreal. Where Christian burial symbolism previously dominated the image, the view now passes through the opening to a pharaoh who fills the night sky in the background. The rising ground fog—a cloud excerpt from a sky photograph—signals the beginning dissolution of the construct.

“MCE Dream Deconstructed & Rebuilt” is essentially my second transformation of Escher’s “Dream.” I had already recontextualized this vault structure in an ink drawing (“French Vacation”) in the early 1990s.