New Museum Response Paper Pipilotti Rist, whose original given name was Elisabeth Charlotte, was born in 1962 in Grabs, Switzerland and is currently living in Zurich. She studied graphic design, illustration and photography at the Institute of Applied Arts in Vienna, as well as audiovisual communications and video at the School of Design in Basel. As a visual artist, Rist works with videography and creates films which are often projected in exhibitions. From her earliest tapes to her recent multi-media installations, Rist has crafted a body of work in which she explores the joining of female sexuality, technology, and pop culture through playful and provocative remixes of fantasy and the everyday. Fantasy is very much imbedded into her work—the
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Curated by Massimiliano Gioni, Pixel Forest occupies three floors of the New Museum of Contemporary Art. It includes work throughout Rist’s entire career, from her earliest videos of the 1980s, which explore the representation of the female body in popular culture, to her more recent extensive video installations, which transform the space into dream-like environments enhanced by mystical music. The exhibition is eccentric and unconventional; visitors of the New Museum are quickly attracted to the stunning visuals that contain colorful aesthetics, and strange subject matters. Rist refers to her art as a “glorification of the wonder of evolution,” as her work explores various physical and psychological experiences. She also takes inspiration from MTV clips as she once stated, "I have the greatest respect for some MTV clips… since they have a power of innovation and a spirit of discovery that really surpasses video art." Pixel Forest brings viewers into an unexpected universe, exploring various textures, forms, and functions of the living world around us, and intriguing us with the voyeuristic pleasure and discomfited alarm that gives her work its ambiguity and …show more content…
The rich vocabulary of sensual experience teases out audience’s secret desires, in contrast to the more familiar sights in the world of art exhibitions. For example, Rist’s “4th Floor to Mildness” require viewers to lie on beds sporadically spread on the floor and to gaze up to the ceiling in which they see a video installation of watery scenes on two separate large ceiling screens, accompanied by a music. The experience offered to the audience by “4th Floor Mildness” is surreal and magical, and delightfully confusing. While the imagery submerges the viewer under water, there are occasional clouds of pink, exploding clouds of dirt, and glimpses of a breast or other body parts. By lying down on a bed, it felt as if I was the one trapped under water, but it was not necessarily torturous. The video projection along with the music grasp the mind in peace, serenity, and wonder. Personally, “4th Floor to Mildness” intrigued me because it sent perplexing signals to my body and mind—lying down and viewing the video of underwater scenes would seem to cause panic and for some it may produce muddled and claustrophobic sensations, but at the same time I was brought into a world of marvel by the continuous and gentle flow from one watery scene to the next. Accompanied by the lyrical and crisp melodies that well-imitated the watery action in
Curated by Massimiliano Gioni, Pixel Forest occupies three floors of the New Museum of Contemporary Art. It includes work throughout Rist’s entire career, from her earliest videos of the 1980s, which explore the representation of the female body in popular culture, to her more recent extensive video installations, which transform the space into dream-like environments enhanced by mystical music. The exhibition is eccentric and unconventional; visitors of the New Museum are quickly attracted to the stunning visuals that contain colorful aesthetics, and strange subject matters. Rist refers to her art as a “glorification of the wonder of evolution,” as her work explores various physical and psychological experiences. She also takes inspiration from MTV clips as she once stated, "I have the greatest respect for some MTV clips… since they have a power of innovation and a spirit of discovery that really surpasses video art." Pixel Forest brings viewers into an unexpected universe, exploring various textures, forms, and functions of the living world around us, and intriguing us with the voyeuristic pleasure and discomfited alarm that gives her work its ambiguity and …show more content…
The rich vocabulary of sensual experience teases out audience’s secret desires, in contrast to the more familiar sights in the world of art exhibitions. For example, Rist’s “4th Floor to Mildness” require viewers to lie on beds sporadically spread on the floor and to gaze up to the ceiling in which they see a video installation of watery scenes on two separate large ceiling screens, accompanied by a music. The experience offered to the audience by “4th Floor Mildness” is surreal and magical, and delightfully confusing. While the imagery submerges the viewer under water, there are occasional clouds of pink, exploding clouds of dirt, and glimpses of a breast or other body parts. By lying down on a bed, it felt as if I was the one trapped under water, but it was not necessarily torturous. The video projection along with the music grasp the mind in peace, serenity, and wonder. Personally, “4th Floor to Mildness” intrigued me because it sent perplexing signals to my body and mind—lying down and viewing the video of underwater scenes would seem to cause panic and for some it may produce muddled and claustrophobic sensations, but at the same time I was brought into a world of marvel by the continuous and gentle flow from one watery scene to the next. Accompanied by the lyrical and crisp melodies that well-imitated the watery action in