Pipilotti Rist: Pixel Forest

Over the past 30 years, Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist (b. 1962) has achieved international renown as a pioneer of video art and multimedia installations. Her mesmerizing works envelop viewers in sensual, vibrantly colored kaleidoscopic projections that fuse the natural world with the technological sublime. Referring to her art as a “glorification of the wonder of evolution,” Rist maintains a deep sense of curiosity that pervades her explorations of physical and psychological experiences. Her works bring viewers into unexpected, all-consuming encounters with the textures, forms, and functions of the living universe around us.

Occupying the three main floors of the New Museum, Pipilotti Rist: Pixel Forest will be the most comprehensive presentation of Rist’s work in New York to date. It will include work spanning the artist’s entire career, from her early single-channel videos of the 1980s, which explore the representation of the female body in popular culture, to her recent expansive video installations, which transform architectural spaces into massive dreamlike environments enhanced by hypnotic musical scores. Featuring a new installation created specifically for this presentation, the exhibition will also reveal connections between the development of Rist’s art and the evolution of contemporary technologies. Ranging from the television monitor to the cinema screen, and from the intimacy of the smartphone to the communal experience of immersive images and soundscapes, this survey will chart the ways in which Rist’s work fuses the biological with the electronic in the ecstasy of communication.

On view from October 26, 2016 through January 15, 2017, Pipilotti Rist: Pixel Forest is curated by Massimiliano Gioni, Edlis Neeson Artistic Director; Margot Norton, Associate Curator; and Helga Christoffersen, Assistant Curator. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue copublished by the New Museum and Phaidon Press Limited.

About the artist
Pipilotti Rist was born in Grabs in the Rhine Valley, Switzerland, and currently lives and works in Zurich. She studied graphic design, illustration, and photography at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, as well as audiovisual communications and video at the Basel School of Design. Solo exhibitions of her work have been presented internationally at venues including Kunsthaus Zürich (2016); Kunsthalle Krems, Austria (2015); Times Museum, Guangzhou, China (2013); Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea (2012); Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan (2011); the Hayward Gallery, London (2011); the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH (2011); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the Netherlands (2009); the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2008); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2007); and the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, TX (2006); among many others. Rist was awarded the Zurich Festival Prize (2013), the Harper’s Bazaar Art China Prize (2012), and the Joan Miró Prize (2009).

Related public programs
Pipilotti Rist in conversation with Massimiliano Gioni
Thursday January 19, 2017, 7pm

Support

The New Museum gratefully acknowledges the following sponsors for their support of Pipilotti Rist: Pixel Forest:

Lead funding is provided by the Artemis Council of the New Museum: Maria Baibakova, Chair, and Valerie Biberaj, Sarah Rose Calodney, Radhika Chanana, Agnes Gund, Nasiba Hartland-Mackie, Sue Hostetler, Catherine Levene, Randi Charno Levine, Toby Milstein, Bettina Prentice, Debbie Rechler, Lisa Schiff, and Tiffany Zabludowicz.

Generous support is provided by: The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, JPMorgan Chase & Co., the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, Marguerite Steed Hoffman, Ali Ahmet Kocabiyik, Hesta Ltd., Jill and Peter Kraus, Cindy and Howard Rachofsky, and an anonymous donor, Switzerland.

Special thanks to Hauser & Wirth and Luhring Augustine.

Exhibition design and production have been generously supported by Kvadrat.

Additional support is provided by Lyn and Sam Schwab; American Chai Trust; Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg; the Consulate General of Switzerland in New York; Top Carpet, Switzerland; and Dynamic Projection Institute, Austria.

The accompanying catalogue is made possible, in part, by the J. McSweeney and G. Mills Publications Fund at the New Museum.

Artist talks and conversations in 2016 and 2017 are sponsored by First Republic.

The artist wishes to personally thank her supporters and collaborators, all of whom are listed in the exhibition catalogue.

About New Museum
The New Museum is the only museum in New York City exclusively devoted to contemporary art. Founded in 1977, the New Museum is a center for exhibitions, information, and documentation about living artists from around the world. From its beginnings as a one-room office on Hudson Street to the inauguration of its first freestanding building on the Bowery designed by SANAA in 2007, the New Museum continues to be a place of experimentation and a hub of new art and new ideas.