Biography of Pipilotti Rist
The colorful projection-filled world of pioneering video artist Pipilotti Rist is full of surprises. Entering a totally different sphere of perception where animals roam free and apples are available for consumption, visitors of Rist's exhibitions find themselves immersed in rich audiovisual scapes where moving images flicker across strips of fabric hanging from the ceiling or onto antique furniture in a dreamlike fashion.
One of Pipilotti Rist's great achievements lies in deconstructing the screen and its function as a neutral projection surface, freeing the moving image from the confines of this rectangular space and opening up the possibility of projecting onto more textured surfaces and objects. In her work Pixel Forest, 2016 she projects a video onto 3000 suspended LED lights, reminiscent of a screen exploded into a thousand pieces and rendering the image itself unrecognizable. Psychedelic yet soothing, aesthetic yet intellectual, Pipilotti Rist's multimedia installations are an unforgettable experience.
Born in 1962 in Switzerland, Pipilotti Rist has been honored with many awards, most recently with the Harper's Bazaar China Art Prize in 2012, the Zurich Festival Prize in 2013, and the Prix Meret Oppenheim in 2014. She had a retrospective at the Kunsthaus Zürich in 2016 as well as important solo shows at the MoMA, New York and the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich. Invited by Professor Paul McCarthy, Rist was a visiting faculty member at UCLA between 2002 and 2003. She lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland.
