Pipilotti Rist’s walk-in installations assure a holistic physical experience. Barefoot or in stocking feet, visitors enter the pavilion housing her 3-channel installation A Liberty Statue of Löndön, which is draped with long curtains. Inside, red upholstered and fabric-covered benches invite one to linger. Rist has grouped these objects around a square reflective surface. Concealed underneath this is a box with three projectors whose images are projected onto the ceiling via deflecting mirrors. The effect is astonishing, as this creates a three-dimensional spatial impression that appears to dissolve the actual architecture, not unlike a baroque ceiling painting. The ceiling projection, in turn, is reflected on the reflective surface on the floor. Visitors are invited to make themselves comfortable on the sofas in the dim room and immerse themselves in the suggestive visual worlds of the Swiss artist.
The artwork explores our relationship to nature and built space. The camera staggers through an autumnal forest; it crawls on the ground through wild grasses, gets caught in the golden-brown leaves, and cautiously wanders up a rough birch trunk before losing itself in the blue of the sky. Rist’s protagonist here is the freelance dancer Ewelina Guzik, a red-haired young woman who not only relishes exploring the forest, but also playfully explores a banal underpass with her body. “My character returns to civilization from the Garden of Eden,” explains Pipilotti Rist. “Her behavior here is similar way to her ‘melded-with-nature’ state. Although she laments the changes in her surroundings, she nonetheless accepts them, is proud, hysterical and tender.” The spherical sounds of the audio track mix with natural sounds, which include the chirping of birds, the cracking of branches, and even the whispering voice by Guzik reciting a poem in Polish. With her installation, Rist has created a meditative experiential space in which opposites dissolve, so to speak, and everything seems to become one.
