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.

Pipilotti Rist was born Elisabeth Charlotte Rist in Grabs in the Rhine Valley.

Her father is a doctor and her mother is a teacher.

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.

She started going by "Pipilotti", a combination her childhood nickname "Lotti" with 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.

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.

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.

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.

From 2002 to 2003, she was invited by Professor Paul McCarthy to teach at UCLA as a visiting faculty member.

“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.

From summer 2012 through to summer 2013, Rist spent a sabbatical in Somerset.

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.