Pipilotti Rist
Studio still life. Courtesy of the artist.
The artist's first survey in the Middle East "Electric Idyll" is now on view at Fire Station Galleries in Doha.
Pipilotti Rist’s Zurich studio doesn’t disappoint. It’s just as zany, kaleidoscopic, and creatively cluttered a space as one would imagine the celebrated Swiss artist inhabiting. For the past 30 years, Rist has concocted her lavishly imagined immersive worlds—from her hypnotic “Pixel Forests” to dream-like films, right here, in an underground studio in Zurich’s Little Italy that she calls her “digital cave.”
The studio is a space of playful contradiction, feeling at once sprawling and cozy, stuffed with costumes one moment, like the backstage of a theater, and appearing as a high-tech laboratory the next. Some days the mood of the space is bustling—Rist has a devoted cadre of full- and part-time teammates who bring her visions to life. But in other moments, it becomes a solitary oasis where the artist can toil with almost monastic focus.
Right now, Rist is the subject of her first survey exhibition in the Middle East, “Electric Idyll” at Doha’s Fire Station’s gallery spaces (through June 1). The exhibition brings together a mix of significant historical works from the 1990s and new productions. But this is no stuffy career overview. Instead, Rist offers up a communal, participatory setting, that she calls a “hypnotic diorama” interweaving textiles, furniture, installations, and video projections. Among the star moments of the exhibition is Ever is Over All (1997)—the video installation that won Rist Best Young Artist at the Venice Biennale in 1997. This survey marks Rist’s second installation in Doha, following Your Brain to Me, My Brain to You (2022) which was on view at the National Museum of Qatar until earlier this year.
Read full article at artnet.com