Pipilotti Rist — Prickling Goosebumps & A Humming Horizon
Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist presents a selection of sculptural works and projections in Prickling Goosebumps & A Humming Horizon, a major two-part exhibition opening in New York.
Acclaimed experimental artist Pipilotti Rist seeks to make video tactile, to ‘put it back to our bodies’ and free moving images from the inhibiting glass panels of their display. The results of her endeavours are kaleidoscopic and immersive; richly saturated caverns of colour. Visitors – taken beyond the status of ‘viewers’ – are invited to move in tandem with the experiences surrounding them.
Maintaining the flavour of Pipilotti’s idiosyncratic oeuvre, Prickling Goosebumps & A Humming Horizon has been conceived by the artist as a captivating multisensory experience. Transforming Hauser & Wirth’s West 22nd Street building into a whimsical ‘collective living room’, Pipilotti explores both the interior and exterior of physical and psychological spaces.
Through Pipilotti’s enchantments, the entire street level space is awash in lush reds and vegetal greens. Several single-channel sculptural video works, including many presented publicly for the first time, pepper the gallery space.
For each of these works, Pipilotti has embedded a video into a found domestic object or piece of furniture—from ‘Ich brenne für dich (I burn for you)’ (2018), fashioned from an antique marble fireplace mantle, to ‘Over Hill and Dale <Über Stock und Stein>’ (2023), which animates the interior of a vintage toy horse stable with oscillating forms and colours.
A new group of sculptures, together titled ‘Metal Flake Milk Tooth’ (2023), are arranged across the gallery floor. Constructed from fibreglass composite, furniture-esque geometries are subverted by alien patina; the sculptures have been coated with metal flakes, airbrushed candy colours, and clear lacquer that yield glittery, optically dynamic surfaces.
Two new major video projections – ‘Welling Color Island East’ (2023) and ‘Welling Color Island West’ (2023) – and the new moving light installation ‘Petting Colors’ (2023), complete the interior adventure. Pipilotti’s richly coloured projections swirl down from the ceiling onto carpet ‘islands’, occupied by cushioned seating areas. Here, visitors can interact and sit a while beneath the gentle connectivity of Pipilotti’s cascading lights.
