Multimedia installation artist Pipilotti Rist is the star of the New Museum’s latest all encompassing survey. “Pipilotti Rist: Pixel Forest” opened today on the three main floors of the museum and spans three decades of the Swiss artist’s work, from her early single-channel videos of the ’80s, which focus on ideas around feminine representation in popular culture, to her recent large scale, dreamlike, installations.
The museum states: “Ranging from the television monitor to the cinema screen, and from the intimacy of the smartphone to the communal experience of immersive images and soundscapes, this survey charts the ways in which Rist’s work fuses the biological with the electronic in the ecstasy of communication.”
Rist speaks very poetically about her work when describing her installations. She recently spoke with Artforum about the retrospective; “With my installations,” she explained, “every room has different tasks, a special challenge. It’s like fitting a costume to the room, and the person is sometimes bigger or smaller. In the end, the visitor should be the center. And what I’m doing is creating an environment for them. It’s all about having them in the middle, helping them to come into a daydreaming state. I like to think of the projections as opening up or dissolving the walls.”
Pipilotti Rist: Pixel Forest is curated by Massimiliano Gioni, Edlis Neeson Artistic Director; Margot Norton, Associate Curator; and Helga Christoffersen, Assistant Curator. The show is on exhibit at the New Museum through January 15, 2017. For museum hours and admission prices, go here.
