Doug Aitken – Mirage JRP Editions

Special, limited edition. Fragile, handle with care.

Dedicated to American artist, Doug Aitken’s three iterations of the ‘Mirage’ installation in Palm Springs, Detroit, and Gstaad (2017–2021), this publication offers the reader an experiential book that shares some of the characteristics of the artwork – immersive emotion, disrupted perception, merging of the viewer and the landscape.

A site-specific installation successively exhibited in the California desert outside Palm Springs, a defunct Detroit bank, and the Swiss Alpine landscape of Gstaad, ‘Mirage’ is inspired by the ranch-style suburban American house (informed by the ideas of architect Frank Lloyd Wright) and entirely composed of reflective mirrored surfaces. A visual echo-chamber, its mirrored surfaces form a life-size kaleidoscope that absorbs and reflects the landscape. Subject and object, interior and exterior, the tangible and the ephemeral, the psychological and the physical, built architecture and landscape: each of these oppositional forces are held in constant tension, yet allowed to shift and transform during the passing of time and seasons. There is no fixed perspective or correct interpretation. Each experience of this living artwork is unique. “I’m interested in the viewer seeing themselves in the work”, Aitken says about his installation, which also dialogues with the history of the Land art.

Conceived as an immersion in the artwork’s atmosphere, the book gathers together never-before-published photo-documentation on the three ‘Mirage’ installations, drawings, and other material related to the project, a comprehensive text by Neville Wakefield, as well as an interview with the artist on the history and evolution of ‘Mirage’. Featuring cold foils, special inks, silver printing, and bound as a leporello to reflect on the mirror-like quality of ‘Mirage’, the book is a limited edition of 1000 that will become a collectible volume. Co-edited with LUMA Foundation and Zolo Press.

Product Details

• Artist – Doug Aitken

• Publisher – JRP Editions

• ISBN – 9783037645642

• Format – hardback

• Pages – 168

• Illustrations – 90 color

• Dimensions – 

  325mm x 244mm

• Weight – 6 lbs