Pipilotti Rist Presents New Works at Fundación Joan Miró

BARCELONA.- This exhibition submerges us in Rist’s colourful universe. The exhibition begins with two small video installations, Porqué te vas? (nass) (2003) and Grabstein für RW (2004), and then moves on to one of the artist’s best-known works, Sip My Ocean (1996). This piece uses two walls that meet in a corner of the room, serving as large screens onto which are projected an underwater scene with people swimming around to the sound of Pipilotti Rist’s hypnotic voice singing Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game. This work speaks about our deep lifelong wish to understand each other completely and our nearly impossible desire to be synchronic.

In Tyngdkraft, var min vän (2007), people and leaves float in space. The title is an invitation to reflect on the force of gravity while lying back and watching the projections on two amorphous ceiling panels. Do we see and hear differently when our muscles are relaxed?

The next installation in the exhibition is Ginas Mobile (2007), a mobile formed by a branch, a copper globe and a plexiglass tear, across which projections of large-scale vulvas travel; because of the uncommon paleness of the images, they are not easy to recognise and thus are deprived of their usual connotations. Here the artist gently questions social fears and taboos.

Lungenflügel (2009) is a three-wall installation. The footage is linked with the artist’s first feature film, Pepperminta. The shots show Pepperminta (Ewelina Guzik), the protagonist in Rist’s recent works, interacting with nature in a search for analogies and contradictions between human and animal life.

The following installation, Regenfrau (I Am Called A Plant) (1999), also addresses the subject of communion with nature. In this case the artist contrasts organic life, represented by a naked vulnerable body lying on the street in the rain, with the domesticity and sterility of an immense kitchen, onto which the video is projected.

The show ends with À la belle étoile (2007), a projection onto the museum floor, and with Doble llum, the work that will remain a part of the Fundació Joan Miró’s permanent collection.

Pipilotti Rist is also showing three works at Fontana d’Or, in Girona. The first is Ever Is Over All (1997), two overlapping projections that show a field of red flowers and, respectively, a woman happily walking down the street. She is brandishing one of the flowers and with it breaks the windows of cars parked along the sidewalk as though that were a normal, everyday activity. The installation addresses stereotypical ideas of property and rules of behaviour. The cars stand for obstacles that are all too seldom questioned.

Lap Lamp (2006) is a video installation using a standing lamp that projects a tree-filled field, broken wood and nettles onto the visitor’s lap, caressing her/him. The work is a face-off between the rigidity of physical confinement and the desire for psychological freedom.

And lastly, Deine Raumkapsel (2006) is a work that looks like a shipping box from outside. But within it is a miniature bedroom, seemingly recently abandoned, with a star-filled sky and an emerging moon on the walls. A video projection moves over the walls showing slow-motion sequences of people of all ages interacting with each other, against the background sounds of wind and sacred music.