Pipilotti Rist, eyeball massage

Pipilotti Rist

Upon entering the gallery I felt very overwhelmed visually to the sheer space and amount of sound coming from different directions, the fact I had just queued up to buy a ticket in a very mundane surrounding added to that feeling, almost as if I was buying a cinema ticket and then queuing up again to go through two double doors into this huge dark space filled with light and sound.

The first thing I noticed was the underwear chandelier and I remember thinking “I’d love that in my house” then from there, I think the focal point initially which held my attention was the miniature house with wall projection.

I love the way Rist uses scale to such a great extent, to make these dinky little maquettes without making them look too childish or resembling doll houses. She manages to somehow create something otherworldly by projecting video onto or around her maquette she turns them into a small reality, like a different miniature dimension. I believe it is her use of sound and video shrunk to the desired scale that suggests that it’s more than a maquette, it uses technology! In other words a big step up from a dolls house and possibly closer to the real world than the toy.

Further, when looking at the maquettes one has to peer into, around, down onto or up at depending on the piece and placement. Rist’s idea that the human body is central plays havoc with her artworks in order to view the majority of her maquettes looking into them is required like the piece “ your space capsule”. Which is a wooden packing crate with a miniature bedroom inside, filled with a moon, stars, the obvious bedroom materials and projections and sound.

This is created in order to distort the viewer’s set ways of movement and viewing in the gallery space. Rist disrupts the viewing rituals by projecting images which to be seen properly require the viewer to be lying down, looking into, walking around or even over the artworks. This works wonders for “your space capsule” by encouraging the viewers to peer deep into the box with only enough space comfortably for one viewer at a time. It becomes private as you gaze into an empty room you feel as if that room is your own and you are for that second mentally transported away from a public gallery space and the miniature world seems bigger than it actually is.

Lauren Roberts