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16/12/2005

Enrique Marty, Pipilotti Rist

MUSAC Contemporary Art Museum, Leon

Flaschengeist, The German’s Cottage; Problemas buenos

The artist Enrique Marty will make a site-specific installation project at MUSAC: 'Flaschengeist, The German’s Cottage'.
Curator: Estrella de Diego. Coordinators: Tania Pardo and Mari'a Soria. Dates: December 17, 2005 -April 16, 2006 . Venue: Exhibition Hall 2, MUSAC

Enrique Marty (Salamanca, 1969) will build a huge scenography of olden carnival settings in MUSAC for this specific project. Different stands will house the characters of this particular Monster Parade: the girl who levitates, the seven-headed man, the snake-woman, the macro-encephalic, the dog-man, etc. Characters of this Carnival will introduce us into this world that combines surprise and magic with reality and tricks. MUSAC is an initiative of the Junta de Castilla y Leo'n through the Fundacio'n Siglo.

The representation of a world based on the aesthetic of the sordid and the perverse similar to gore movies, the attraction towards the recondite and a reflection on the sinister that lies in the familiar and the everyday, are characteristics of the work of Enrique Marty (Salamanca, 1969). The creative universe of this artist from Salamanca is reminiscent of the monstrosity that Todd Browning already spoke about in his movie, Freaks The Parade of the Monsters (1923). Sculptures, canvases, drawings, installations and photographs reflect a universe of everyday psychic pathologies. His characters create a dual sentiment: on one hand, they lead us to absolute rejection; and on the other, to a more mysterious attraction. Enrique Marty, who has done some incursions into the world of theater through spectacular scenography, will create a site-specific project in MUSAC where all the elements and characteristics of his work are present.

In this show entitled, Flaschengeist, The German’s Cottage, the artist recreates a world of carnivals and barracks inspired by the freaks of the 19th century through a huge scenography. The enigmatic universe that hides behind all these will be, on a large feature, the summary of his project. Sculptures of the girl that levitates, the seven-headed man, the snake-woman, the macro-encephalic, the dog-man, etc. Characters of the carnival that combines the world of surprise and magic with reality and tricks.

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Musac marks the Spanish comeback of Pipilotti Rist with four video installations and a music compilation disc.
Problemas buenos. 4 obras de Pipilotti Rist y amigas.
Curator: MUSAC. Coordination: Marta Gerveno. Date: December 17, 2005 - April 16, 2006. Venue: Exhibition Halls 4, 5 and 6.

Pipilotti Rist, one of the artists who have marked artistic practice in the 90’s with greater force, presents a selection of her latest productions, as well as a disc that gathers the best of her music, ever present in her pieces. Four video installations - in exclusive versions for MUSAC - as well as a video that will be shown in a bar in the center of Leo'n, will complete the show. The work of Pipilotti Rist is inscribed within a narrative art, whose topic is the memory of the lived experience that is not past but that makes itself present. In a certain autobiographical form, but situated further than a mere personal anecdote, the video installations of Rist make of the body, of desire, of the sexual, of the fluid, of movement and of music, her leitmotiv. MUSAC is an initiative of the Junta de Castilla y Leo'n through the Fundacio'n Siglo.

Narrative Fantasy
After decades of art centered on the concept, the major part of which questioned the norms and conventions of the use of photography, a new generation of artists was born in the 90’s who incorporated pure fantasy into their works. The telling of a story or the narrative structure in itself is, for these artists, a form of expression in itself that gives them a new raw material with which to construct their own iconography. The final work is a scene or ambience which the artists invent for the camera. Today, artists freely invent their cosmologies, taking elements from very diverse sources that go from Renaissance altars to video games. In their photographs, movies and videos, Matthew Barney, Gregory Crewdson, Anna Gaskel, Pierre Huyghe, Mariko Mori, Sam Taylor-Wood and, our protagonist, Pipilotti Rist, create their own imaginary universe.

Future in Pipilotti
In Rheitnal, Switzerland in 1962, Elisabeth Charlotte Rist was born. Rist studied in the Hochschule fur Angewandte Kunst (Institute of Applied Arts) in Vienna from 1982 to 1986. In the eve of her entrance to Art School, Rist combined her love for the little heroine created by the Swiss writer Astrid Lindgren, Pipi Longsocks, with her own nickname “Lotti". Thus, she became Pipilotti Rist, the young artist who claimed her place in the artistic media for the next decades. “Pipilotti", like her heroine, declared the loyalty of Rist to the kingdom of untamed fantasy and optimism of children.

The new star of the artistic constellation and the contemporary reincarnation of Pipi Longsocks pirates pop culture and art history of the vanguards, travelling all over the world with her “boat" filled with magical dreams that she materializes in her video installations. Evoking the child heroine in innumerable interviews and public interventions, Rist maintains the story of Pipi in the epicentre of the subtle spirit of her art, where the world becomes a backdrop and a playing field, and life becomes a big adventure.

My universe in a screen
In Vienna, Rist studied illustration, photography and advertising. She also made Super-8 animation films, created specially for musical bands. After four years in Austria, Rist returned to Switzerland and, between 1986 and 1988, studied video and animation in the Basel School of Design. The serene patience of an animator combined with the exuberant irreverence of a rock star sharpened the artistic qualities of Rist.

The works of Pipilotti have taken rhythmic elements and essences of the aesthetics of video clips renewing the discourse implicit in them and giving them a restless vision filled with paradoxes, poetic ideas and, above all, charged with detonators of found sensations. Starting from a very personal discourse, her gaze is capable of opening up to others because it establishes a point of dialogue from the identification and similitude of a visual code that starts from a massive media and goes beyond its use: she uses unfamiliar images as a tool with which to allow a glimpse of the prejudices and pre-conceived notions which plague television and advertising. Although we are not fully conscious of it, these stereotype ideas determine in large part our way of viewing the world.

In one of her essays in 1989 entitled “Title", Rist said, “To do videos… means doing a familiar therapy; the television is a member of the family that speaks. If my work is intense, honest and good, then its therapeutic function is also my social relevance." When she wrote this, she was 29 years old: Rist’s explanation gives us a very useful point of entry in her early work. The idea that the television does not have a mere functional application but an animated character in the history of the family reveals Rist’s spirit of work from 1986 to 1996. Her style can be compared to the aesthetics of the television channel MTV (Music Television). From the recordings of the 80’s, in which she adopts the video clip format, montages with sharp cuts alternated with rewinds and slow motion shots, are noteworthy. Without doubt, although she can be considered a daughter of simplicity, the work of Rist is rich and complex, and as she herself says, her videos are “like paintings that move behind the glass (screen)." From video to installation With the passage of time, her works have become more sophisticated each time.

Her style can be compared to the aesthetics of the television channel MTV (Music Television). From the recordings of the 80’s, in which she adopts the video clip format, montages with sharp cuts alternated with rewinds and slow motion shots, are noteworthy. Without doubt, although she can be considered a daughter of simplicity, the work of Rist is rich and complex, and as she herself says, her videos are “like paintings that move behind the glass (screen)."

From video to installation
With the passage of time, her works have become more sophisticated each time. Her personal enrichment, together with technological advancement, has made way for undoubtedly beautiful and enveloping short films. What has not changed is that she still plays the role of the protagonist.

A substantial change was produced when Pipilotti decided to add a new dimension to her creations. She left behind the flat format and started to create installations which integrate videos that are directly projected onto furniture, bathtubs, or simply onto the floor and walls of the museum. The images invite enjoyment. This apparent “sweetness" of her works has provoked critiques. Pipilotti responded to her adversaries by asking them why we should we shy away from pleasure. According to her, enjoyment is maintained on the sidelines of art, as it is considered more akin to popular culture. The artist refuses to make any distinction between low-art and high-art, without denying the existence of quality values.

From the intermittent sequence of psychedelic and pop images, up to the use of rejected video shots, the images of the author are a blend of snapshots of an oneiric universe, reminiscent of the subconscious and all that is reconstructed under a norm of free association. The videos of Rist also search for stimulation, in all senses, upon the perception of their projections in different forms in rooms so that people can sit in gigantic sofas or lie down on the floor to see and hear them. The saturation of colors in her videos - towards electric blues and reds - or the humor and her obsession for the female body, are not the only characteristics of the work of Rist, but also the possibilities that the environment may provoke on the spectator of her works.

The music
Pipilotti is not only associated with MTV for the visual aspects of her shots, but also for the importance that music plays in all her works. Before becoming a visual artist, Rist was part of a female rock group, Les Reines Prochaines. Since then, she hasn’t stopped composing. The hypnotizing songs that accompany the videos are created by the artist with the collaboration of Anders Guggisberg, who is also an artist and a member of the group of professionals who work with her.

On occasion of this show, a music CD produced by MUSAC and edited by SUBTERFUGE RECORDS will be launched, entitled Soundtracks de las videoinstalaciones de Pipilotti Rist, with a total of 20 tracks. For the first time, a compilation of the music of Rist that are part of her video installations will be edited, of equal importance for the artist as her images.

Landing in Musac
The queen of visual narrations in contemporary art is Pipilotti Rist. Her works -poetic, playful and profoundly contemporary- completely change the concepts of space and temporality. Dazzling, shameless, confident, as she conquered her place in the artistic media, the artist now disembarks in MUSAC, Museo de Arte Contempora'neo de Castilla y Leo'n, suggesting us to enter into a universe where our dreams and fantasies spread, where our childhood memories have a place to live in, through five of the latest artistic productions of the Swiss artist, two of them from the MUSAC Collection.

Image: Pipilotti Rist

Opening: December 17

MUSAC (Exhibition Hall 2, 4, 5, 6)
Avenida de los Reyes Leoneses, 24 - Leon
Hours: Tuesday-Thursday, h 11:00 am-20:00 pm; Friday, h 11:00 am- 21:00 pm; Saturday and Sunday, h 10:00 am- 21:00 pm

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