PIPILOTTI RIST: PRICKLING GOOSEBUMPS & A HUMMING HORIZON

Self-described ‘wild and friendly’ Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist presents a selection of new and recent sculptural works and projections in ‘Prickling Goosebumps & a Humming Horizon,’ a major two-part exhibition opening in Chelsea. The exhibition takes place simultaneously at Hauser & Wirth’s 22nd Street location and Luhring Augustine’s 24th Street location and has been conceived by the artist as a multisensory experience for visitors. In these complementary presentations, Rist will explore interior and exterior—internal and external physical and psychological spaces—with Luhring Augustine reimagined as an expansive, shared ‘backyard’ and Hauser & Wirth transformed into a whimsical ‘collective living room.’ At each location visitors will be greeted with an artistic gesture on the façade: the work ‘Textile Simultaneity’ at Luhring Augustine and ‘Innocent Collection’ at Hauser & Wirth. At Hauser & Wirth’s West 22nd Street building, Rist transforms the entire street level space into a ‘living room’ painted in lush reds and vegetal greens. Here guests discover single-channel sculptural video works, including many presented publicly for the first time. For each of these works, Rist has embedded a video into a found domestic object or piece of furniture—from ‘Ich brenne für dich (I burn for you)’ (2018), fashioned from an antique marble fireplace mantle to ‘Über Stock und Stein (Over Hill and Dale)’ (2023), which animates the interior of a vintage toy horse stable with different oscillating forms and colors. A new group of sculptures, together titled ‘Metal Flake Milk Tooth’ (2023), punctuates the space in an arrangement laying low across the gallery floor. Two new major video projections—‘Welling Color Island East’ (2023) and ‘Welling Color Island West’ (2023)—and the new moving light installation ‘Petting Colors’ (2023) complete Rist’s interior adventure at Hauser & Wirth. Her richly colored projections swirl down from the ceiling onto carpet ‘islands’ occupied by cushioned seating areas for communal occupancy and immersion. The gently moving lights of ‘Petting Colors’ dance across the room to land upon visitors and connect them to one another as well as Rist’s other works in situ, making members of the public active participants in her enchantments. With their furniture-like qualities—each form evokes yet subverts the familiar geometries of a chair or coffee table— these objects hew to Rist’s longstanding fascination with the reflective and emotive potentials of light: constructed from fiberglass composite, the sculptures have been coated with metal flakes, airbrushed candy colors and clear lacquer that yield glittery, optically dynamic surfaces which defy capture by photography.