New York
These days, theater and spectacle rule public discourse-a perfect moment for Pipilotti Rist’s startlingly prescient critique. Sexy and seductive, soothing and even therapeutic, this survey of Rist’s work from the mid-1980s to the present sought to disrupt the normalizing effect of today’s mediated, digitalized state of being and its accompanying desire for pleasure and entertainment. The exhibition’s subversive purpose was evident in the single-channel videos that initiated Rist’s career. Hung at shoulder height from the wall, triangular boxes constructed from wood insisted that viewers stick their heads inside, where they discovered video and sound chambers filled with scenes of excess and abjection. In one, an out-of-focus woman with exposed breasts dances in dizzy fast-forward, while a highpitched voice repeatedly sings, “I’m not the girl who misses much,” …see the entire review in the print version of Jul/Aug’s Sculpture magazine.
