Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist

Pipilotti Rist is Switzerland’s most famous contemporary artist. Her colourful multi-screen videos and installations demonstrate highly accomplished technical skills and incorporate the different art forms of film, music and performance. Her works often revolve around issues related to gender and the human body. But unlike those of many conceptual artists, Pipilotti’s creations are mostly light hearted and humorous, and they mediate a sense of joy and happiness.

Pipilotti achieved notoriety with works like Ever is Over All (1997) – a woman walking along a city street, smashing the windows of parked cars with a large hammer in the shape of a tropical flower; Open my Glade (2000) – video segments that were played every hour on a screen in Times Square in New York; and Homo Sapiens Sapiens – an installation in the church of San Stae at the 2005 Venice Biennale. In 2008, she released her first full-length feature movie, Pepperminta. Pipilotti has won numerous artistic prizes, and there is practically no leading art collection in the world that doesn’t display her work.

As Adrian Searle, the art critic of The Guardian recently wrote: “As much as anything, Pipilotti’s art is about visual pleasure.” And it’s a pleasure to have her with us for the last evening of “Switzerland, a very short introduction”.

Thursday, May 5, 2011, 17.00h - EPFL, Auditorium CO 2