alexandre de betak inserts reflective light installation into traditional swiss barn

alexandre de betak presents ‘chashitsu hikari schürli’

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.

Alexandre de Betak unveils Chashitsu Hikari Schürli during Gstaad Art Week

vernacular barn as perceptual laboratory

Installed inside a pre-industrial agricultural building, the work occupies two levels of the existing barn. Its raw timber structure and utilitarian proportions become part of the experience. Mirrors fracture and extend the architecture, multiplying beams and voids, while natural and reflected light destabilize orientation and depth. As viewers ascend and circulate, surfaces dissolve, volumes stretch, and boundaries become provisional. Reflection functions as a conceptual device, implicating memory, presence, and impermanence within the act of seeing. 

Since first visiting the region several years ago, the French artist has expressed a sustained interest in its rural architecture, its direct use of materials, and the way its volumes sit within the landscape. Chashitsu Hikari Schürli engages this vernacular heritage through contemporary artistic language.

Following a presentation in London during Frieze last fall, the Gstaad installation extends Alexandre de Betak’s research into immaterial artistic architectures. 

mirrors fracture and extend the architecture

the artist reveals spatial conditions already latent within the rural structure

a perceptual environment shaped by shadow, mirror, and movement

the work occupies two levels of the existing barn

the project treats light as primary material

since first visiting the region, the French artist has expressed a sustained interest in its rural architecture

project info:

name: Chashitsu Hikari Schürli

artist: Alexandre de Betak | @alexdebetak

location: Bernese Oberland, Switzerland

occasion: Gstaad Art Week