Lush and Edenic, sexy but sinless, the hedonistic pleasure worlds created by Pipilotti will delight, refresh and chillax you. Pipilotti’s vivid video environments take you into a dream state of elements. Earth, wind, fire and water are alchemically activated in her mesmerizing loops of trippy experience. This major exhibition devised especially by ACCA will be the first major survey of Pipilotti’s works to be shown in Australia.
Named a “guilty pleasure” by British critic Adrian Searle, Pipilotti Rist is one of this century’s most sought after artists and has shown in major exhibitions, biennales and festivals around the world, including the Venice Biennale in 2005 where she represented Switzerland with the stunning installation Homo Sapiens Sapiens in the Church of St. Stae.
Her works are epic and lush and often deal with issues related to gender, sexuality and the human body, but in a way that evokes a sense of unadulterated happiness and innocence.
Loved by critics – Searle said her works grabbed him with their “wanton, infectious and gleeful atmosphere of anarchy”, and The New Yorker’s Peter Schjeldahl wrote Rist “advertises an extreme hedonism that smacks of hippie psychedelia, but with a serene, strange and moving gravity.
Her ACCA exhibition, the first major presentation of her work in Australia, will bring together several key works from Rist’s recent exhibiting history, as well as a new commission which will spread across ACCA’s main exhibition hall with kaleidoscopic glee.
ACCA’s Artistic Director and curator of I Packed the Postcard in my Suitcase, Juliana Engberg, says:
“Pipilotti’s works are visually sumptuous and organically overloaded with a playful fecundity. They are gorgeous, hypnotic and just a little addictive. Sexy is sinless and naughtiness is without wickedness in Rist’s playful romps through the elements of earth, wind, water and fire. Dislodged from narrative but anchored in nature, Rist’s works hold the viewer in a loop of experience and deliver a heightened awareness of sensuality.”
Pipilotti Rist was born in the Swiss Rhine Valley in 1962. Her real name is Elisabeth Charlotte Rist, but the nickname Pipilotti refers to the Astrid Lindgren book character Pippi Longstocking, and has been with her since childhood.
Rist studied at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and was a member of the music and performance group Les Reines Prochaines. Early works were made with super 8 and contained alterations in speed, colour and sound. More recent works include the highly acclaimed MOMA New York atrium project in 2008 and the Stadlounge urban project which she created for the city of Santet Gallen, Switzerland, with architect Carlos Martinez.
