Pipilotti Rist, Layers Mama Layers, Luhring Augustine, 2010, Photographer: Farzad Owrang, Courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York.
Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist is internationally known for using video, audio, and installation to present powerful works that examine human sexuality and gender. Her third solo exhibition at Luhring Augustine, “Heroes of Birth,” opened on September 11, 2010 and features three works. The first, All or Nothing (2010), is a video of kaleidoscope-ing body parts in vibrant colors, which is presented on a small TV screen placed between a water cooler and a vase of flowers. The second work is an installation called Layers Mama Layers (2010). Filling an entire room, this work includes long, translucent fabric hanging from the ceiling with images of flocks of sheep and geometric neon shapes projected onto them. Visitors can walk through the glowing sheets, listening to the white noise and the occasional tinkling music. The final installation is the Massachusetts Chandelier (2010), which is a tiered, lit chandelier made not of glass, but various kinds of underwear. Whitewall got a chance to talk with Rist about her unique exhibit “Heroes of Birth” and her art in general.
WW: So where did your inspiration for the “Heroes of Birth exhibit” come from?
PR: Actually, it was a dream. When I woke up, [I knew] “I have to bring sheep,” and alone, the word “sheep” comforts me. But then also it’s a religious connection that in Christian religion people also resemble sheep. The fact that we need each other, and we only became so dominant in the world because we can deal in groups, and we can plan, and we can interact, and the fact that in cities we come so close together. Why do we do this? We could spread out, but we have a wish to be close. [Sheep] resemble us a lot. I see the sheep, and I know how it would look as a human.
WW: Is there anything about “Heroes of Birth” that makes it different from your other works and exhibitions?
PR: It has no human in it. It’s human in the first work, [but] it’s also kind of a very structured, geometrical show, and has less the exorcistic element I usually have in works. Often there’s some catharsis in my works. Here, less. It’s more comforting. We have a tendency to make our lives as complicated and difficult as possible, even if we have all the privileges, then we take the one problem we have, and then [blow it out of proportion].
WW: In what ways do you like your work to affect your viewers? In an installation piece like Layers Mama Layers, you walk through and experience it with the waves of fabric. What do you hope viewers will experience in a multimedia installation like this?
PR: I want them to have reactions I can’t predict [laughs]. They can choose their perspective, and here in Layers, give themselves to comport with the shadows and each other when they watch and somebody go through. It’s an old artist statement, but it becomes more than the work itself with the people. And then you can enter this work on many different levels. You can think about perspective, for example, when you go in the same position as the projector, you have always a correct picture. As soon as you [move], it distorts. You can see that through the dark sheep you see the next layer and through the bright sheep you don’t see. But it’s quite an open work with not a clear plan of what it should affect.
WW: As a final question, can I ask about the title for the Massachusetts Chandelier? Why Massachusetts, in particular?
PR: Very intuitive decision, and also my associations probably are different than Americans, but I imagine this very old state, like this festive, old bourgeois. And also I like the word “Massachusetts.” It’s this “m,” double “s,” “t, t.” And it’s always mirrored, the “m” between the “s,” the “t,” so the word itself is like a chandelier. The trousers are my mother’s and some of mine and friend’s and some also secondhand, and female, male, mixed. That’s a very old idea, and I finally did it.
Pipilotti Rist, Massachusetts Chandelier, Luhring Augustine, 2010, Photographer: Farzad Owrang, Courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York.
Pipilotti Rist, All or Nothing (alles oder nichts), Luhring Augustine, 2010, Photographer: Farzad Owrang, Courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York.
