Volume 39, Number 01
Diversions
By Owen Schaefer
Media ‘watchdoggery' is so pervasive in film and on television that the sight of a shocking image on video can involuntarily lead the viewer to ask, “Can you show that?” For the more critically minded, it begs the question “Why not?”
The latter is one of many questions that Swiss-born artist Pipilotti Rist raises in her work. As a result, her solo exhibition at the Hara Museum entitled Karakara is not always a show for the squeamish, since the sometime-controversial side of Rist's work focuses on sexuality and the human body. Rist dives into taboos without flinching (although the same can't always be said for her audiences): bloody mouths, extreme close-ups of the body, and even medical endoscopic images have found their way into her videos, often juxtaposed against forests, landscapes, fruit and simple scenes of the everyday.
But Rist does not film these things merely for their shock value; even the most startling of her images are often playful—guileless rather than gory, euphoric rather than erotic. Yet almost all of her works battle against what Rist considers ‘dogmatic ways' of seeing the world. There are strong political and feminist themes here, to be sure, but there is also an abounding, organic love of the human animal, with a dollop of beauty to top it all off.
The Hara show contains works from the grand to the miniature. On the large side is Das Zimmer (The Room), a work consisting of an oversized sofa, chair and lamp, complete with a mammoth remote control and 15 working channel buttons. Viewers are invited to take off their shoes and clamber like children into the chairs, where they are free to watch a selection of Rist's video works displayed on a modestly sized television.
On a much smaller scale (but no less captivating) is Selfless in the Bath of Lava, a coin-sized screen recessed perfectly into a hole in the gallery's wooden floor. Looking down, we watch a distant image of Rist herself, standing naked against the backdrop of a lava flow, sometimes writhing with pain, sometimes appealing to the viewer for help. The image is neither gory nor particularly realistic, but the bond it forges with the viewer is palpable, as is the sense of helplessness and distance it creates.
Ever is Over All, on loan from New York's MOMA, depicts a decidedly feminine young woman walking down the street, joyfully shattering car windows with a suspiciously heavy flower. Then, in I Couldn't Agree With You More another young woman stares deeply into the camera—and consequently into the viewer's eyes—as she strolls through buses and supermarkets, with tiny images of naked people frolicking across her face.
Less risqué but still highly mesmerizing is À la belle étoile (Under the Sky), Rist's newest work. For this installation, the video is projected onto the floor of the room, and viewers are asked to stand on it as they watch. It will take a few moments for your eyes to adjust to the scale of the images, but once they do the effect becomes mesmerizing and almost disorienting as you tumble through space, fly off the edges of buildings and be swallowed whole by human faces. While it may lack the edgier elements of some other works, it has a roller-coaster giddiness that's hard to forget.
Pipilotti Rist: Karakara (to Feb. 11) Hara Museum of Contemporary Art. Shinagawa Station. ¥1,000. 11am– 5pm (Wed. until 8pm Closed Mon.) Tel. 03-3445- 0651. www.haramuseum.or.jp