FRANCISCO FERRO
 

Les Inflexions d'Escher (2021) draws its inspiration from the impossible constructions and visual paradoxes of M. C. Escher, whose work was itself profoundly shaped by his encounter with the Alhambra of Granada and its intricate ornamental geometries. During his travels in Spain, Escher closely studied the palace’s interlocking patterns and tessellations, which prompted him to reconsider a fundamental problem in visual art: the tension between the representation of space and the flatness of the pictorial surface.

This inquiry led him to examine the techniques developed since the Renaissance to render three-dimensional space on a plane, before pushing them to their limits through systematic distortions of perspective. In Escher’s prints, these distortions generate volumes that appear coherent yet ultimately defy the laws of Euclidean space.

In Les Inflexions d’Escher, this visual paradox becomes a compositional principle. The work explores processes of transformation inspired by the geometric operations that structure Islamic art in the Alhambra—particularly tessellations and aperiodic mosaics. From these structures emerge several Escherian ideas that guide the musical discourse: metamorphosis between figures, the periodic filling of a plane, the formation of closed circuits, and the suggestion of infinity within a finite frame.

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— Francisco Ferro