Mirage Gstaad, a mirrored house in the Swiss Alps

Following the Palm Springs desert and the spaces of a former bank in Detroit, Michigan, Doug Aitken went to the Swiss Alps to explore the interaction between man and the environment. Gstaad, the popular holiday destination of the international elite in Canton Bern, is the place that hosts and gives its name to the artist's latest installation: Mirage Gstaad. Launched on the occasion of the third edition of the art exhibition Frequencies - Elevation 1049, curated by Neville Wakefield and Olympia Scarry, the work is simply a house covered with ALUCOBOND® naturAL Reflect panels. 

The structure is modelled on the Californian ranch houses developed in the 1920s and 1930s that incorporated the ideas of modernist architect Frank Lloyd Wright with the traditional houses of the American West, but it reworks their design through sloping, mirrored surfaces and reflective walls. Inside and outside, environment and building become one, a surreal kaleidoscope designed to reflect and interact with the mountain landscape, adapting month after month to seasonal changes. The same Aitken explains:

"The viewer can come back to the piece as the seasons are changing, in fall in a storm or in the summer when it’s a green pasture. As our lives change the artwork is shifting with us".

Talking about the evocative play of mirrors in the house, which is the result of natural light and the climate changes that illuminate it, the artist said:

“The work really is the sum of the landscape around it. When you think of art you often think of something much more solid, but Mirage moves in an autonomous way. It changes in an almost chameleon-like form.”

Mirage Gstaad is a temporary site-specific installation and will be open until January 2021, including interiors, which are also mirrored. The entrance? It is totally free.