LEGO uber-genius Andrew Lipson is usually guaranteed to blow your mind with his creations (remember his Spectrum ZX–esque reproduction of Rodin’s Thinker?), but he has taken it one step further with his latest work.

Escher’s Relativity has long graced the poster-clad walls of students and arty types, being the predecessor to the digitally produced mind bending dolphins (does anyone actually see flying porpoises after staring at one of those for 20 minutes?) The ‘woah, dude’ factor of the black and white original has never lost its appeal even in these fast-paced technicolor days, but now it has been enhanced with some pain-staking attention to detail - and little men with no hair.

Lipson is at pains to point out to the Lego aficionados amongst us that he is especially proud of the Studs Not On Top (SNOT) technique, which is designed to further deceive the eye. We all know the studs point vertically, so our perceptions of depth and direction are thrown, maybe even more than by the original image.

Just the photo alone took self confessed ‘professional nerd’ Lipson (and co-creator Daniel Shiu) a whole evening to light and find the correct camera position to match the original drawing (see www.andrewlipson.com for more insights). But was it really worth all that time and effort? Is this art? As a quirky one-off, it has legs. An exhibition of work like this? Maybe - in a Greenwich Village gallery where trendies could discuss the relative merits of the youthful playfulness of the piece. Maybe that’s all it is meant to be, Lipson stresses that his pieces do not go on sale, and are usually disassembled after completion, but ArtsWom reckons there might be a market for this type of thing…somewhere out there.

This clever chap promises more in the Escher series (which already includes ‘Balcony’, ‘Belvedere’, ‘Ascending and Descending’ and ‘Waterfall’), so be prepared to suspend your disbelief and bend your mind further in the future. We at ArtsWom will certainly be looking out for the next addition to the collection, and will follow the career path of Lipson to see if money really can be made from this most interesting of hobbies. Which reminds us to look in the loft for that big box of square bricks…