Thursday, January 22, 2009

Pipilotti Rist @ the MoMA


Peter Schjeldahl sez:

The Swiss video whizbang Pipilotti Rist’s latest be-in, “Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters),” is the best thing to happen so far in the Museum of Modern Art’s space-splurging, pompous atrium. Go. Lounge on the huge circular pouf. Let the surrounding, wall-filling video imagery—streaming in supersaturated color—and the droning electronic music wash over you. What with evocations of touch, taste, and smell in the bucolic pans and zooms of sunstruck flowers, fruits, animals, and adorably naked bodies, a perfect synesthesia takes hold. As always, Rist advertises an extreme hedonism that smacks of hippie psychedelia, but with a serene, strange, and moving gravity—a whiff of tragedy, even. It’s as if one thinks, I have never been so happy, and then, with a chill, I will never be this happy again. The bird’s-eye views from the museum’s upper floors form a poignant, slightly scary memory: an intermittently twitching wreath of supine human beings. The work is art and, also, in its sumptuously and modestly passing way, something other and better than art. (Tune In, Turn On)

Pipilotti Rist: Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters)
November 19, 2008–February 2, 2009 @ the MoMA

it's rare for Peter to be so enthusiastic about anything, so i feel the need to point out this exhibition, plus i know pipilotti's work and am confident that this will be dope. i watched "i want to see how you see" in film class and while the title is self-explanatory, it's impossible to articulate the visuals. can't wait to be fully engulfed by seven projectors of her work.

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