At Gstaad Artwork Week, an inventive director illuminates a standard Swiss barn

Once we final noticed artist Alexandre de Betak, he was at his new London mews atelier, the place he was within the midst of preparations for his debut present throughout Frieze. Having stepped away from the catwalk and the manufacturing home he spent his profession constructing, the immersive set up – made up of glowing modular mild panels – marked the start of a brand new chapter for private creative initiatives.

4 months on, de Betak finds himself working with the identical mild panels, however in relatively completely different environment within the Bernese Oberland. Right here, the futuristic modules are arrange alongside rigorously positioned mirrors inside a standard Swiss barn, their medical geometry at odds with tough timber partitions and a construction constructed for storage and labour relatively than contemplation. The distinction is deliberate: a rural, pre-industrial house used as a vessel for one thing extra surprising and contemplative.

The set up, unveiled throughout Maze Artwork Gstaad 2026, is titled Chashitsu Hikari Schürli – a nod to the conceptual bridge de Betak attracts between Swiss and Japanese vernacular structure. The chashitsu is the extremely codified house of the Japanese tea ceremony; the schürli, a modest Alpine farm shed. Although culturally distant, each share an financial system of means and a respect for materials honesty. De Betak says he isn’t making an attempt to recreate both type, however relatively ‘summary their underlying rules’.

The barn itself is used throughout two ranges, with mirrors positioned to fracture and lengthen the structure, creating moments the place house feels doubled, skewed, or more durable to learn. The barn’s horizontal timber slats create a gentle visible rhythm, their tough strains echoed by the ribbed glow of the sunshine panels. Snowlight filters by means of gaps within the construction, flattening the palette to wooden, white and silver; the impact is unusually calming, as if the panorama outdoors has seeped into the set up itself.

Right here, de Betak treats mild as a constructing materials, utilizing it to mirror, take up and multiply. As guests transfer by means of the construction, the work shifts round them, destabilising depth and orientation. That impulse feels per what de Betak described in London final autumn, when he spoke about forsaking the ‘goal’ of the style occasion. ‘While you take away the target of the occasion,’ he stated then, ‘you’re a bit extra free – however you’re additionally misplaced.’ In Gstaad, that sense of being unmoored turns into a part of the work itself: the set up is much less about producing a singular picture than about heightening consciousness of the house you’re standing in, and the way you’re transferring by means of it.