Traversing the alpine slopes of the voguish Gstaad, Switzerland during an Elevation 1049 art festival feels more like stepping into the matrix than a lavish ski resort. Positioned amongst snow-laden trees and stark against the barren alpine slopes lie some of the most adventurous creations of the international art circuit. From dramatic phantasm sculptures to minimal wooden architectural structures, mirages of gold sunlight and mystical and occult rings of burning fire, esteemed art truly reaches sublime heights here.

Every few years, this elegant mountain landscape is transformed into the ephemeral and otherworldly mise-en-scène of an ambitious art collective. Looming trajectories of great rocky peaks, tree-lined couloirs, dazzlingly white pistes and the revered mountainous town itself are the canvases for an ensemble of Swiss artists. From the Wes-Anderson-worthy Gstaad Palace to the heavenly summit of Glacier 3000, visitors step into this snowy gallery for an unmissable experience for serious high-art lovers.

The high-altitude art festival Elevation 1049 is innovatively co-curated by the established and chic duo Neville Wakefield (who has curated for MOMA, Frieze projects, Playboy…) and Olympia Scarry (sculpture artist) and produced by Maja Hoffmann’s LUMA& foundation. Launching in 2014, every few years up to twenty-five Swiss-born artists from around the globe assemble to construct this radically artsy winter wonderland in their home country. The first in a sequence of site specific art exhibitions, it chimes with the endeavours of the 1970s Earthworks art movement which sought to merge art with the burgeoning ecological movement. Engrained in the natural environment, the exhibition provocatively explores time and place.

Gstaad, winter playground of the jet-set elite and home to a starry troupe of celebrities from Madonna to Roman Polanski to Princess Dianna, has always been known to attract the glamorous and creative. But Elevation 1049 is the affluent town seen through fresh eyes. As Wakefield iterates, “you discover the art through the place and the place through the art”. Gstaad is brought back to its natural and cultural roots by this exhibition, at least to some extent…

So named for its height in meters above sea level, Elevation 1049 is an ambitious and interactive wintery scavenger hunt for jewels of the contemporary art scene, dotted at various altitudes across the Saanenland. Be prepared to remove yourself from the calming still comfort of gallery walls, as these challenging works are no easy feat to access. The art-bound journey may take you by cable car over snow-capped peaks, by horse drawn sleigh through dense wintery woodland or by foot across icy blueish-tinged glaciers. Pieces playing with the light, sound, materials and whirling elements of the alpine landscape await, provocatively navigating the line between social and nature, culture and climate. If you’re not up to the challenge, more accessible works are to be found in the town: from the railway station to quiet streets to the glimmering ice rink.

Past iconic works include the vividly vibrant snow-scape action painting of Olaf Breuning. Pigmented and painted toboggans cast down the Eggli mountain created abstract expressionist strokes of loud and lurid colours across the pristine snow: a startlingly colourful Pollockesque rendition of skiers’ first tracks on the mountain. Christian Marclay transformed a cable car heading up the Gondelbahn glacier into a montage of Bollywood movies shot in Gstaad. Kitschy, romantic Indian cinema framed against the panorma of the picturesque Swiss Alps: this is undeniable brilliance. Meanwhile, Roman Signer creatively played with gravity and movement; jettisoning a wooden chalet on skis down a snowy slope to be left alone and askew at the foot of the hill amongst icy mounds. Another standout piece was by Doug Aitken who constructed a glistening mirrored cabin. Reflecting strokes of sunlight and the grandiose landscape around it, it gleamed on its rocky crag like a magical mirage.

Amongst extreme weather, these works are transient and ever-evolving, and that is exactly the point. As Scarry declares, “a lot of the pieces work with the weather … they’ll melt, or decompose, or deteriorate … that’s what’s interesting, it’s art as process rather than end product.” So far Elevation 1049’s themes have been ‘Between Heaven and Hell’, ‘Avalanches’ and ‘Frequencies’, all of which focus on exactly this sort of unstable and transformative quality of the Saanenland’s topography and weather. The latest festival has increasingly spotlighted performance art and live music, with the art centring just as much on the local Swiss culture as the landscape.

This interactive and physical art experience is Wakefield’s remedy to the “art fair, urban white-cube gallery experience”. And certainly, there is a revitalising, fresh energy in experiencing art this way. Above anything else, it is so much more real than the oftentimes pretentious spaces of city galleries. Elevation 1049 is the height of innovative, radical art intertwined with the modish luxury of Gstaad and the holistic experience of Switzerland’s natural beauty. There really is nothing else like it.