Pipilotti Rist



Pipilotti Elisabeth Rist (born 21 June 1962) is a Swiss visual artist best known for creating experimental video art and installation art. 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.

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.

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

From 1982 to 1986 Rist studied commercial art, illustration, and photography at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in Vienna. 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. In 1997, her work was first featured in the Venice Biennial, where she was awarded the Premio 2000 Prize. 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.

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

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) Rist dances before 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.

Rist achieved notoriety with Pickelporno (Pimple porno) (1992), 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.

Sip my Ocean (1996) 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.

Ever Is Over All (1997) 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. 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 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” (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.

Pour Your Body Out 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."

Her first feature film, Pepperminta, had its world premiere at the 66th Venice International Film Festival in 2009. 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.”

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."

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."

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.

Architectural Art and Public Art

 * since 1995: Flying Room. Video projection on the ceiling of the UBS entrance hall, Buchs, St. Gallen
 * 2000 and 2017: Open my Glade. Video installation on Times Square, New York
 * since 2001: Ein Blatt im Wind (A Leaf in the Wind). Swiss Embassy Berlin, Germany
 * since 2005: Stadtlounge (City lounge). Square and street design in St. Gallen, cooperation with Carlos Martinez
 * since 2010: Ceiling installation in the restaurant Le Loft on 18th floor of the Sofitel Hotel (Nouvel Tower), Vienna
 * since 2014: Münsteranerin. Permanent video installation in the entrance area of the Museum für Kunst und Kultur in Münster, Germany
 * since 2016: Monochrome Rose. Streetcar train in pink, Geneva
 * since 2020: Tastende Lichter (Inching lights). Permanent video installation on the façade of Kunsthaus Zürich

Audio and Video art

 * 1986: I’m Not The Girl Who Misses Much
 * 1988: Das Zimmer (1994/2000)(Entlastungen) Pipilottis Fehler
 * 1992/1999: Eine Spitze in den Westen – ein Blick in den Osten (bzw. N-S) (A Peek Into The West – A Look Into The East)
 * 1992: Pickelporno
 * 1993: Blutraum (Blood room)
 * 1993: Eindrücke verdauen (Digesting Impressions)
 * 1993: Schminktischlein mit Feedback (Little Make-Up Table With Feedback)
 * 1993: TV-Lüster
 * 1994/99: Cintia
 * 1994/2000/2007: Das Zimmer (The Room)
 * 1994: Selbstlos im Lavabad
 * 1994: Yoghurt On Skin – Velvet On TV
 * 1995: Search Wolken / Suche Clouds (elektronischer Heiratsantrag) (Search Wolken / Such Clouds (Electronic Marriage Proposal))
 * 1996: Sip My Ocean (Schlürfe meinen Ozean)
 * 1997: Ever Is Over All
 * 1998: Blauer Leibesbrief (Blue Bodily Lettre)
 * 1999/2001, 2007, 2009: Kleines Vorstadthirn (Small Suburb Brain)
 * 1999: Himalaya Goldsteins Stube (Himalaya Goldstein’s Living Room)
 * 2000: Öffne meine Lichtung (Open my Glade (Flatten))
 * 2000: Himalaya’s Sister’s Living Room
 * 2000: Peeping Freedom Shutters for Olga Shapir
 * 2000/2001: Supersubjektiv (Super Subjective)
 * 2001/2005: Wach auf (Despierta)
 * 2001: Expecting
 * 2002: Der Kuchen steht in Flammen (The Cake is in Flames)
 * 2003: Apfelbaum unschuldig auf dem Diamantenhügel (Apple Tree Innocent On Diamond Hill) (Manzano inocente en la colina de diamantes)
 * 2004: Herz aufwühlen Herz ausspülen (Stir Heart Rinse Heart)
 * 2005: Eine Freiheitsstatue für Löndön (A Liberty Statue for Löndön)
 * 2005: Homo Sapiens Sapiens
 * 2006: Celle selbst zu zweit, by Gutararist aka Gudrun Gut & Pipilotti Rist
 * 2007: Ginas Mobile (Gina’s Mobile)
 * 2008: Erleuchte (und kläre) meinen Raum (Enlight My Space )
 * 2011: Cape Cod Chandelier
 * 2014: Worry Will Vanish Horizon
 * 2015: Wir verwurzeln (Seelenfarben)
 * 2016: Pixelwald
 * 2016: 4th Floor To Mildness
 * 2017: Caressing Dinner Circle (Tender Roundelay Family) 5er table
 * 2018: Sparkling Pond, Bold-Coloured Groove & Tender Fire (Please Walk In And Let The Colors Caress You)
 * 2020: Fritzflasche (The Bottle of Fritz)
 * 2023: Hand Me Your Trust

Feature Film

 * 2009: Pepperminta

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

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.

Recognition

 * 1997 – Renta Preis of the Kunsthalle Nürnberg
 * 1998 – Nomination for the Hugo Boss Prize
 * 1999 – Wolfgang Hahn Prize
 * 2003 – Honorary Professorship from Berlin University of the Arts
 * 2006 – Guggenheim Museums Young Collector's Council Annual Artist's Ball honouring Pipilotti Rist
 * 2007 – St. Galler Kulturpreis der St. Gallischen Kulturstiftung
 * 2009 – Special Award, Seville European Film Festival
 * 2009 – Joan Miró Prize, Barcelona
 * 2009 – Best Exhibition Of Digital, Video, or Film: "Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters)" at Museum of Modern Art, New York. 26th annual awards, The International Association of Art Critics (AICA)
 * 2010 – Cutting the Edge Award, Miami International Film Festival
 * 2011 – Best Architects '11 Award
 * 2012 – Bazaar Art, International Artist of the Year, Hong Kong, China
 * 2013 – Zurich Festival Prize, Zürcher Festpiele
 * 2014 – Baukoma Awards for Marketing and Architecture, Best Site Development
 * 2021 – Elected Honorary Royal Academician (HonRA) on 9 September 2021
 * 2024 – Culture Prize of the Canton of Zürich

Personal life
Rist lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland with her partner Balz Roth, an entrepreneur. She and Roth have a son, Himalaya.