Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist presents "eyeball massage", an exhibition
commissioned exclusively for the Hayward Gallery, during London’s FRIEZE art
fair last week. Rist, specializing in video installations, shows 30 of
her works, carefully selected from her three-decades long career.
Ranging from small- to large-scale, the viewer is taken through a series of
kaleidoscope-like moving images in the cavernous gallery space. Carpeted floors
and a littering of large pillows allow the viewer to use the floor to
experience her work from a variety of viewing points. Rist aims to instill a feeling
of “relaxation” and “inhibition” in her audience while viewing her works. She believes
that taking people out of the typical cultural confines of the museum will enable
the viewer to accurately feel what was intended from each piece.
With her dollhouse model of a child’s bedroom, Rist wants to provoke a
feeling of distance, nostalgia, and “virtual vertigo” while peering down from
above into this tiny constructed world. While her more recent works are serene and pretty, her
earlier works are gritty and sexualized; this includes a video loop of
a man eating a juicy tomato, shots of aggressively zoomed-in sex organs, and “Blood Room”
which visualizes menstruation.
From the vast range of subjects addressed in her video, the common
denominator and modus operandi of her film are rhythmic sound and motion. The
repetitive loop of images and sound create a familiarity, which
resonates clearly in “eyeball massage”.
photos courtesy of the artist
