Sunday Escape - Mirage

California just outside Palm Springs. Desert Palisades, where the San Jacinto mountain range down to the Coachella Valley. Here, in an area famous in recent years for the Coachella Music Festival, one of the coolest events in the world that in the edition 2017 will starring Lady Gaga and Radiohead, there is Mirage, a small structure clad top-to-bottom in mirrors. Not a house, not a sculpture, but "a human-scale kaleidoscope". American artist Doug Aitken reinterprets the typical ranch-style building of the American suburban through a series of reflective surfaces that dissolve into the surrounding environment.
No doors. No windows. No the inhabitants and each object that are mindful of the presence.
Mirage is pure concept, metaphorical mirror of anonymous suburban houses that have saturated the US landscape through the second half of the 20th century.

"I was interested in taking the sculptural form of a house that you would never even notice, the kind that you've perhaps driven by a thousand times without even registering. I wanted to take that form of house and drain it of all its narrative, all its story, everything personal or considered about it and let it become pure form" - Aitken told explaining his project -  "Everything is made of mirror...All the corridors and rooms are designed specifically for this location... "

Because depending on the angle from which you view it, the work can blend into its surroundings or reflect an entirely different scene on its exterior walls. The artist continues: "At night the distant lights refract to create a universe of stars. On a tranquil afternoon, the sky is transformed into banks of blue fragmented by slices of clouds. There is no fixed perspective or correct interpretation. Each experience of this living artwork will be unique". Mirage is part of the Desert X Art Festival, along with 16 works by as many artists that will transform according to his own style the Coachella Valley area into a canvas that stretches across 45 miles.
All installations will be open until April 30, except that of Doug Aitken who will remain on view until 31 October.