Doug Aitken participates in Desert X

The Coachella Valley and its desert landscape become the canvas for a curated exhibition of site-specific work by established and emerging artists (25 February - 30 April 2017).

Doug Aitken: Mirage

Desert Palisades / Tuscany Heights

In the tradition of land art as a reflection of the dreams and aspirations projected onto the American 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 mirror 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.

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Image: Desert X installation view of Doug Aitken, Mirage 2017, photography by Lance Gerber, courtesy the artist and Desert X.