alexandre de betak inserts reflective light installation into traditional swiss barn

"Alexandre de Betak unveils Chashitsu Hikari Schürli during Gstaad Art Week, a light installation set inside a traditional Swiss barn in the Bernese Oberland. The project treats light as primary material, structuring space through reflection, absence, and modulation. The artist reveals spatial conditions already latent within the rural structure, transforming the barn into a perceptual environment shaped by shadow, mirror, and movement."

"The project draws a conceptual line between the schürli, a small Alpine farm shed, and the chashitsu, the highly codified Japanese tea ceremony space. Although geographically distant, both share an economy of means, material honesty, and logic shaped by ritual, climate, and restraint. The work neither replicates the tea house nor reconstructs the farm shed. The artist distills their shared sensibility using light, which becomes the mediating element through which these traditions intersect."

Chashitsu Hikari Schürli occupies a traditional Swiss barn in the Bernese Oberland and uses light as its primary material to structure space through reflection, absence, and modulation. The installation spans two levels of the pre-industrial agricultural building and incorporates the raw timber structure and utilitarian proportions into the experience. Mirrors fracture and extend the architecture, multiplying beams and voids while natural and reflected light destabilize orientation and depth. Ascending and circulating viewers encounter dissolving surfaces, stretched volumes, and provisional boundaries. Reflection operates as a device that implicates memory, presence, and impermanence. The work aligns the schürli and chashitsu through shared restraint and material honesty without literal replication.

Read at designboom | architecture & design magazine