Pipilotti Rist

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Pipilotti Rist
Portraitfoto Pipilotti Rist.jpg
Portrait image of Pipilotti Rist
Born
Elisabeth Rist

(1962-06-21) 21 June 1962 (age 62) [1]
Nationality Swiss
EducationInstitute of Applied Arts, Schule für Gestaltung
Known for Video art
Notable workPepperminta, I'm Not The Girl Who Misses Much, Pickelporno, Ever is Over All
Awards Joan Miró Prize (2009)
Website pipilottirist.net
Monochrome Rose, Pink tramway in Geneva, public art by Pipilotti Rist Tramway rose de Pipilotti Rist.jpg
Monochrome Rose, Pink tramway in Geneva, public art by Pipilotti Rist
Line 71-17 detail of interior Ligne 71-17 Les Indociles-2.jpg
Line 71-17 detail of interior

Pipilotti Elisabeth Rist (born 21 June 1962) is a Swiss visual artist best known for creating experimental video art and installation art. [3] Her work is often described as surreal, intimate, abstract art, having a preoccupation with the female body. Her artwork is often categorized as feminist art.

Contents

Rist's work is known for its multi-sensory qualities, with overlapping projected imagery that is highly saturated with color, paired with sound components that are part of a larger environment with spaces for viewers to rest or lounge. Rist's work often transforms the architecture or environment of a white cube gallery into a more tactile, auditory and visual experience. [4]

Early life and education

Pipilotti Rist was born Elisabeth Charlotte Rist [5] in Grabs, Switzerland, in the Rhine Valley. [6] Her father was a doctor and her mother a teacher. [7] She started going by "Pipilotti", a combination of her childhood nickname "Lotti" and her childhood hero, Astrid Lindgren's character Pippi Longstocking, in 1982. [8] Prior to studying art and film, Rist studied theoretical physics in Vienna for one semester. [9]

From 1982 to 1986 Rist studied commercial art, illustration, and photography at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in Vienna. [10] She later studied video at the Basel School of Design, Switzerland. From 1988 through 1994, she was member of the music band and performance group Les Reines Prochaines. [11] In 1997, her work was first featured in the Venice Biennial, where she was awarded the Premio 2000 Prize. [10] From 2002 to 2003, she was invited by Professor Paul McCarthy to teach at UCLA as a visiting faculty member. From summer 2012 through to summer 2013, Rist spent a sabbatical in Somerset. [12]

Artwork

During her studies, Rist began making super 8 films. [10] Her works generally last only a few minutes, borrowing from mass-media formats such as MTV and advertising, [13] with alterations in their colors, speed, and sound. [14] Her works generally treat issues related to gender, sexuality, and the human body. [15]

Her colorful and musical works transmit a sense of happiness and simplicity. Rist's work is regarded as feminist by some art critics. Her works are held by many important art collections worldwide.

In I'm Not The Girl Who Misses Much (1986) [16] Rist dances in front of a camera in a black dress with uncovered breasts. The images are often monochromatic and fuzzy. Rists repeatedly sings "I'm not the girl who misses much", a reference to the first line of the song "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" by the Beatles. As the video approaches its end, the image becomes increasingly blue and fuzzy and the sound stops. [17]

Rist achieved notoriety with Pickelporno (Pimple porno) (1992), [18] a work about the female body and sexual excitation. The fisheye camera moves over the bodies of a couple. The images are charged by intense colors, and are simultaneously strange, sensual, and ambiguous. [19]

Sip my Ocean (1996) [20] is an audio-video installation projected as a mirrored reflection on two adjoining walls, duplicating the video as sort of Rorschach inkblots. Besides a television and tea-cups other domestic items can be seen sinking slowly under the ocean surface. The video is intercut with dreamlike frames of bodies swimming underwater and other melancholic images such as colourful overlays of roses across the heavens. Slightly abstract and layered the visuals invite the viewer to reveal its depth beneath the surface. Accompanying the video is Rist singing Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game". Her voice is starting of sweetly but becomes gradually out of synchronicity with the song, ending in the shrieking chorus of “No, I don’t wanna fall in love”. Rist breaks the illusion of synchronicity in the video with the asynchrony of the audio and captures the human longing for and impossibility of being totally in tune with somebody else. [10] [21]

Ever Is Over All (1997) [22] shows in slow-motion a young woman walking along a city street, smashing the windows of parked cars with a large hammer in the shape of a tropical flower. At one point a police officer greets her. [23] The audio video installation has been purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Rist's nine video segments titled Open My Glade [24] were played once every hour on a screen at Times Square in New York City, a project of the Messages to the Public program, which was founded in 1980.

“I want to see how you see – a portrait of Cornelia Providori” [25] (2003) is an audio-visual work spanning 5:16. The sound was created in collaboration with Andreas Guggisberg, with whom Rist often works with. The main subject is the dialectical tension between macro and micro and how the continents are mirrored on the human body. The technical components are two to four layers of edited images, intricately cut and stacked on top of each other. [26]

Pour Your Body Out [27] was a commissioned multimedia installation organized by Klaus Biesenbach and installed in the atrium of the Museum of Modern Art in early 2009. In an interview with Phong Bui published in The Brooklyn Rail, Rist said she chose the atrium for the installation "because it reminds me of a church's interior where you’re constantly reminded that the spirit is good and the body is bad. This spirit goes up in space but the body remains on the ground. This piece is really about bringing those two differences together." [28]

Her first feature film, Pepperminta , had its world premiere at the 66th Venice International Film Festival in 2009. [29] She summarized the plot as "a young woman and her friends on a quest to find the right color combinations and with these colors they can free other people from fear and make life better.” [30]

When interviewed by The Guardian for a preview of her 2011 exhibition at London's Hayward gallery, Rist described her feminism: "Politically," she says, "I am a feminist, but personally, I am not. For me, the image of a woman in my art does not stand just for women: she stands for all humans. I hope a young guy can take just as much from my art as any woman." [31]

Rist has likened her videos to that of women's handbags, hoping that they'd have “room in them for everything: painting, technology, language, music, lousy flowing pictures, poetry, commotion, premonitions of death, sex, and friendliness." [32]

Other activities

In 1998, Rist was a finalist for the Hugo Boss Prize administered by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. The jury selected Douglas Gordon as winner. [33] [34]

Works (Selection)

Cable car Monochrome Rose, Geneva, since 2016 Art&tram-MonochromeRose-5-Coutance.jpg
Cable car Monochrome Rose, Geneva, since 2016
Ceiling installation at Le Loft - Nouvel-Tower, Vienna Uniqa Tower - Le Loft Restaurant 18th Floor.jpg
Ceiling installation at Le Loft – Nouvel-Tower, Vienna
Video installation Tastende Lichter (Inching Lights), facade of Kunsthaus Zurich Chipperfield Candrian.jpg
Video installation Tastende Lichter (Inching Lights), façade of Kunsthaus Zürich

Architectural Art and Public Art

Audio and Video art

Feature Film

Collections

Rist's work is held in the permanent collections of museums and galleries including the Museum of Modern Art, [47] the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, [48] the San Francisco MoMA, [49] and the Utrecht Centraal Museum. [50] Her installation, TV-Lüster , is on permanent display at the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen. [51]

Influence

Ever Is Over All was referenced in 2016 by Beyoncé in the film accompanying her album Lemonade in which the singer is seen walking down a city street smashing windows of parked cars with a baseball bat. [52]

Recognition

Personal life

Rist lives and works in Zurich, [65] Switzerland with her partner Balz Roth, an entrepreneur. She and Roth have a son, Himalaya. [66] [10]

Further reading

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ever Is Over All</span> 1997 audiovisual installation by Pipilotti Rist

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">TV-Lüster</span>

TV-Lüster (1993) is a 6-channel video installation by Swiss multimedia artist Pipilotti Rist from 1993. It has been on permanent display in the hall of the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen since 1994.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">I'm Not The Girl Who Misses Much</span> 1986 multimedia installation by Pipilotti Rist

I′m Not The Girl Who Misses Much (1986) is an early multimedia installation by Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist from 1986.

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