By Sandra Bertrand
Pipilotti Rist – Big Heartedness, Be My Neighbor
The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA
Los Angeles, CA
September 12 – June 6, 2022
All you have to do is first encounter Pipilotti Rist’s features smashed against a pane of glass to know she’s an “in your face” kind of artist. This first West Coast survey of the internationally renowned Swiss media artist is a one-of-a-kind event. Rist’s installations explore relationships of video and the body; exterior environments and interior psychological landscapes. Reason and instinct coalesce. They exuberantly probe the video medium’s capaciousness—for vivid color; sweeping views and extreme close-ups; introspection and cultural critique. More importantly, they inspire shared experiences within the public space of the museum. More than thirty years of the Zürich-based artist’s work are on display: Early single-channel videos; large-scale installations with hypnotic musical scores and sculptures that merge everyday objects, video, and decorative forms. Pipilotti Rist: Big Heartedness, Be My Neighbor also debuts a new audio-video installation made specifically for The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA.
Pipilotti was born Elisabeth Rist in Grabs in the Rhine Valley On June 21, 1962. Her work is often described as surreal feminist art, having a fixation with the female body. Pipilotti is a combination of her nickname “Lotti” with her childhood hero, the beloved fictional character of Pippi Longstocking. She lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland with her partner Balz Roth, an entrepreneur. She and Roth have a son, Himalaya. Her first feature film, Pepperminta, had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in 2009. She summarized the plot as “a young woman and her friends on a quest to find the right color combinations and with these colors they can free other people from fear and make life better.” Wouldn’t it be lovely if we as artists could find the right color formula to insure a better world?
ON YOUR RADAR EVENTS WORTH NOTING:
Judy Chicago Retrospective
deYoung Museum, San Francisco
(Through January 9, 2022)
New Time: Art and Feminism in the 21st Century
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
(Through January 30, 2022)
Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe
High Museum of Art, Atlanta
(Through January 9, 2022)
Joan Mitchell
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
(Through January 17, 2022)
Niki de Saint Phalle in the 1960s
The Menil Collection, Houston
(Through January 23, 2022)
There is a Woman in Every Color: Black Women in Art
Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME
(Through January 30, 2022)
Thinking of You, I mean Me, I Mean You: Barbara Kruger
Art Institute of Chicago
(Through January 24, 2022)
Suzanne Valadon: Model, Painter, Rebel
Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia
(Through January 9, 2022)
Labyrinth of Forms: Women and Abstraction, 1930-1950
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
(October 9-March 2022)
Witch Hunt (Contemporary Feminism)
Hammer Museum and the Institute of Contemporary Art
Los Angeles, CA
(October 10-January 9,)
Yolanda Lopez: Portrait of the Artist
Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego
(October 16-April 24, 2022)
Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
(October 17-January 23, 2022)
Alma W. Thomas: Everything is Beautiful
The Phillips Collection, Whitney Museum, New York
(October 30-January 23)
Jennifer Packer: The Eye is Not Satisfied with Seeing
Whitney Museum of American Art
(October 30 opening-January 2022)
The New Woman Behind the Camera
National Gallery of Art, Washington
(October 31-January 30, 2022)
