Gödel, Escher, Bach
With Eleanor Antin, Christian Bök, peter campus, Richard Cavell, Louisa Clement, John Conway, Wim Crouwel, Hanne Darboven, Simon Denny, Arthur Reinders Folmer, Suzette Haden Elgin, Hansje van Halem, Florian Hecker, Georg Herold, Herlinde Koelbl, London Fieldworks (Bruce Gilchrist and Jo Joelson), John C. Lilly & Randolph T Dible, Ernst Mach, Giacomo Miceli, Matan Mittwoch, Moshe Ninio, Joke Olthaar, Daphne Oram & Tom Richards, Sigmar Polke, Royden Rabinowitch, Thomas Ruff, Marcus du Sautoy & Victoria Gould, Jeremy Shaw, Kim Soun-Gui, Eugene van Veldhoven, Christopher Williams, Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Curators: Marie-José Sondeijker and Ory Dessau

19.05.2023 — 08.10.2023 19.05.2023 West in the former American embassy, Lange Voorhout 102, The Hague

The exhibition Gödel Escher Bach borrows its title, and to some extent, its thematic and conceptual scope, from Douglas Hofstadter’s book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, which was published in 1979 and won the Pulitzer Prize in the year after. In the book, the author explores shared threads in the metamathematical theorem of logician Kurt Gödel, the optical illusions of graphic artist M.C. Escher and the musical looping of composer Johann Sebastian Bach, through which he elaborates on the concept of self-reference. For him, an epitomic instance of self-reference is Escher’s 1948 lithograph Drawing Hands depicting a sheet of paper on which two hands draw each other, and therefore, drawing the hand and the action that drew them, as well as the pencil and paper with which and on which they were drawn. Escher’s Drawing Hands suggests an overlap of beginning and end, action and outcome. In this sense, it connects to Hofstadter's analysis of Bach’s Canons and Fugues, where the final entry of a piece returns to the opening key. To describe this, Hofstadter uses the term ‘strange loops,’ occurring “whenever, by moving upwards or downwards through the level of some hierarchical system, we unexpectedly find ourselves right back where we started.”
In Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems, Hofstadter points to the limits of provability within formal axiomatic systems, to the fact that some truths could only be presupposed (rather than certified), an example of a strange loop, a self-referential structure verifying its own unprovability, its own unverifiability. The form of self-referentiality the book and the exhibition occupy leads to paradoxes, irrationality, recursion, and infiniteness. It indicates underlying geometrical and arithmetic mechanisms which are symmetrical yet arbitrary and senseless. The exhibition Gödel, Escher, Bach at West Den Haag Situates Escher’s work in a broader context provided by Hofstadter’s book. It aspires to introduce the potential of Escher’s work to new audiences and to apply Hofstadter’s insights to contemporary art. The exhibition includes works and installations by artists of different generations from The Netherlands and beyond. It was initiated during the Escher year in The Hague, offering a particular addition to the Escher print exhibition at Kunstmuseum Den Haag and to the Escher in the Paleis presentation.