pipilotti rist | du wirst sorglos sein

Pipilotti Rist (*1962 in Grabs, Switzerland) is a pioneer of contemporary video art. With large-scale video projections she creates fascinating immersive spaces that blend a variety of sensory impressions and affect the viewer’s sense of corporeality, space, and time. Two video installations will be shown for the first time in Germany at the kestnergesellschaft. Rist counters the fears and demands of our performance-driven society with dreamlike spaces of relaxation and imagination. In Worry Will Vanish Horizon (2014), a video projection across two walls envelops the room, which is closed off by curtains. Like in a ritual, visitors leave their shoes and thus also the outside world behind before entering the space. Blankets and a soft carpet invite viewers to lie down, relax, and immerse themselves in the projected images and sounds. A pleasantly hypnotic journey begins that connects the human body with other organisms and its environment, which extends to the entire universe. In unusual perspectives, insights into the inside of the human body are combined with almost tactile close-up views of skin and plant structures, with the starry sky or water that flows across the projection surface. Rist worked with her longtime partner, the artist and musician Anders Guggisberg, to create the sounds that accompany the images. Worry Will Vanish Horizon was influenced by principles of autogenic training, a relaxation technique that strengthens the consciousness of the body and activates the imagination. In part digitally animated, the brightly colored, high-resolution images flow from one to the next in a rhythmic choreography so that what they show seems to dissolve into a dynamic continuum. In the video installation Sleeping Pollen (2014), reflective metal spheres hang at various heights in a second, darkened room. Video projectors in the spheres cast kaleidoscopic images into the room which revolve around plants against a starry sky. The ethereal impression is accompanied by gentle jangling, buzzing, and rustling sounds. As visitors wander through the room and the projections, here, too, they become an active part of the work. Rist notes that Sleeping Pollen »is offering the winter plants an electronic bed in a dark cosy room. Their dreams spin slowly in the air«. Instead of irreconcilably juxtaposing technology and nature, the virtual and the physical, here each of these elements contains the other.

The exhibition was curated by Heinrich Dietz. A solo exhibition with works by Nan Goldin will also be on view from 19 June to 27 September 2015.