Michael Satterfield
Palm Springs is a favorite weekend getaway for myself and many other Southern Californians. Palm Springs is known for its architecture and art scene and artist Doug Aitken celebrates both with his installation Mirage. The structure is built in the traditional ‘ranch’ style and completely covered inside and out with mirrors, is perched atop a hill overlooking the city. The mirrored surface makes the house almost disappear if not for the door and window openings. Inside more mirrors create an almost ‘funhouse” style effect.
From the artist’s site:
In the tradition of land-art as a reflection of the dreams and aspirations projected onto the America West, Mirage presents a continually changing encounter in which subject and object, inside and outside are in constant flux. The ranch-style structure suggests a latter-day architectural version of manifest destiny, a primary structure rendered by the artist without function service or texture. With every available surface clad in mirrored panels, it both absorbs and reflects the landscape around in such ways that the exterior will seemingly disappear just as the interior draws the viewer into a never-ending kaleidoscope of light and reflection. As Mirage pulls the landscape in and reflects it back out, this classic one-story suburban house becomes a framing device, a perceptual echo-chamber endlessly bouncing between the dream of nature as pure uninhabited state and the pursuit of its conquest. For more information please visit: dougaitkenmirage.com
The installation is going to be viewable to October 2017 and is free, however, they do limit the number of people to 25 at a time. If you would like to visit it, I have linked a google map HERE
