Pipilotti Rist

* 1962

The videos and installations by Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist lead viewers into a sensual, colorful world. Extreme close-ups of body parts, unfamiliar perspectives and the digital post-processing of the film material make familiar subjects appear alien. In a playful, erotic way, Rist explores the female body and questions the social concepts of sexuality, gender and identity.

Rist became known through her video as I'm not the girl who misses much (1986) — a persiflage of superficial eroticism in music video clips — in which she turned up with bare breasts hopping around excitedly to a remake of the Beatles song Happiness is a Warm Gun. Music is a key design element in many of her single-channel films, which follow the format and aesthetics of music video clips, but she deconstructs these in a subtle way. The artist is herself a musician and was a singer in the Swiss women’s band Les Reines Prochaines.

Since the 1990s, Rist has also created extensive multi-channel projections and expansive installations, in which the viewer is involved. The boundaries between exhibition space and film, reality and fantasy seem to dissolve.