Shot inside the Richard Neutra-designed Tremaine House in Montecito, California – a private residence never before used as a filming location – American artist Doug Aitken captures a modernist home inhabited by characters searching for meaning, reflection and place in Lightscape - Open House.

Taken from the hour-long feature Lightscape – a new film-based installation on view at The Shed in New York City, the experimental short captures a cycle of youth and age as characters merge with their surroundings, guided through surreal visual and sonic landscapes, scored by the LA Master Chorale and the LA Phil, with Icelandic performer Bjarki.

Playing with light, shadow, and reflections cast by the house’s extensive glass walls and kaleidoscopic mirrors, Aitken captures his characters in a shared sense of self-reflection, and desire to connect with the histories and lives of those around them. Evolving into a vulnerable, humanistic study of the shifting state of modern life, Neutra’s West Coast modernist architecture becomes both a pleasure prison and a fever dream – where narratives intertwine but never quite shatter the protective glass of the gaze. 

Doug Aitken's Lightscape is on view at The Shed in New York City until 13 September.

London’s Vinyl Factory is currently releasing Aitken’s original score Lightscape on vinyl, available via streaming platforms.