Pipilotti Rist - Elixir

Enjoy Elixir by Pipilotti Rist in Kiasma

The main exhibition of the autumn season in Kiasma is Elixir by Pipilotti Rist, the Swiss superstar of international video art. We have the pleasure to invite a representative of your editorial staff to a preview of the show on Thursday, 3 September 2009, at 11 am. The artist will be present for interviews. The exhibition will be held on the fifth floor of Kiasma from 5 September to 6 December 2009.

Pipilotti Rist creates intense visual worlds where sensual visual narrative merges with meditative soundscapes. The works are a Paradise that the artist invites her viewers to enter. Elixir comprises six audio/video installations. They transform Kiasma’s fifth floor into an immersive space where visitors can lie back on pillows and let themselves be carried away on the flow of images and music. The artist hopes that Elixir will be true to its title and serve as medicine for the mind - to care, nourish and energise.

Pipilotti Rist has been working with moving image since mid of the 1980s. Her work has been influenced especially by experimental cinema, television imagery and pop music. Rist's ambiguous and sometimes provocative video works have delighted and amazed audiences in solo shows as well as international art exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale. Work by Pipilotti Rist has previously been showcased in Kiasma at the ARS01 exhibition and in an exhibition featuring a single installation at the turn of 2003-2004. The artist also has works in Kiasma's collections. Rist's first feature-length film Pepperminta will be premiered in September 2009.

Pipilotti Rist (born 1962 in Switzerland) rose to the vanguard of contemporary art soon after her debut exhibition as video artist in 1986. In the early days of her career, she designed stages for local rock bands and directed their music videos. Rist herself played for several years in a band called Les Reines Prochaines. She studied graphic design and photography in Vienna and video art in Basel. Pipilotti Rist currently lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland.

The exhibition is organised in cooperation with the Boijmans Van Beuningen museum in the Netherlands.

Pipilotti Rist
Elixir
Kuratorin: Arja Miller