Visual Artists - Research
1. Pipilotti Rist
Pipilotti Rist is a Swiss visual artist. Her work is distinct with its bright colourful imagery and the statements about gender, the body, sexuality and pop culture through her videos since her first breakthrough hit, I’m Not The Girl Who Misses Much (1986). [1]
Born in Switzerland in 1962, her work Ever is All Over features a woman in sparkling ruby slippers promenading down a car-lined street. The fluidity of the scene, accompanied by an entrancing soundtracks is broken when the woman suddenly smashed a car’s window. Her works often feature bright colours and is criticized for being too accessible.
Her installations often take up not only the walls in galleries but also the floors and every possible nook and cranny she gets to work with. Her installations are often interactive and seek the audience's participation.
Rist's imagery has several foundations, and invites just as many interpretations. Culled from resources as rich and varied as fairy tales, feminism, contemporary culture, and her own imagination, the artist's color-saturated, kaleidoscopic projections are a sophisticated visual amalgam of wit, humor, and irony. [2] Pipilotti Rist’s target is predominantly women, her works focus on female sexuality and societal expectations for women and how women break away from that (eg. in Ever is Over All the woman breaks the side windows of a row of cars dressed in a bright blue dress. No one attempts to stop her despite the fact that she even meets a police officer who just happens to be also female and just salutes her.) Her works focus on women being independent and being in control of themselves.
2. Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Born in Bangkok, Apichatpong grew up in Khon Kaen in north-eastern Thailand. [3] In addition to being an installation artist he’s also a well regarded director and writer, whose preference for unconventional storytelling usually relegated his work to the art house. [4] His installations have included the multi-screen project Primitive (2009), a major installation for the 2012 Kassel Documenta and most recently the film installations Dilbar (2013) and Fireworks (2014). Other recent projects include online films Ashes, (2012), Cactus River (2012) and a short film to mark the occasion of the Football World Cup shot in Khon Kaen. [5] While developing his film Uncle Boonmee, he received a commission for a video installation regarding the northeastern Thai village of Nabua and its local legend of a predatory widow ghost. There, from the 1960s to the early ’80s, the Thai army carried on a brutal campaign to suppress the allegedly communist activities of farmers. Weerasethakul called his installation Primitive (2009). It included seven videos and several short films, notably A Letter to Uncle Boonmee and Phantoms of Nabua (both 2009). [6]
Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s works part of Primitive (2009) have no linear narrative structure but rather appear as documentaries that constantly slip into dream-world stories, shifting from long, detailed shots of a place or character to situations in a world of the surreal, like the abrupt manifestation of a ghost. These unexpected interactions partly reflect the lifestyle of rural Thailand, which is still based on ancient animistic beliefs, legends and superstitions, and on the lack of any clear-cut demarcation between the real and the spiritual world. The term Primitive has a twofold meaning: on the one hand the primeval desire of humans to return to their origins and, on the other, with greater political overtones, the primitive state in which peoples are forced to live by governments and the establishment. [7] His works take a lot of inspiration from Thai urban legends and history, the surrealistic elements invite the audience to interpret them in their own way and makes them accessible to everyone.
3. Gary Hill
American artist who lives and works in Seattle, Washington. Often viewed as one of the foundational artists in video art, based on the single-channel work and video- and sound-based installations of the 1970s and 1980s. Today he is best known for internationally exhibited installations and performance art, concerned as much with innovative language as with technology, and for continuing work in a broad range of media. [8]
In his work Remarks on Colour (1994), he examines what it’s like for a child to read a philosophical text that may be incomprehensible for an adult. We see a girl of about ten read aloud from Ludwig Wittgenstein's 1951 treatise 'Bemerkungen über Farbe'. Despite great effort, the girl's reading is so halting that it is even difficult for an adult listener to understand the content. Thus, the viewer's attention soon shifts to the projected image. [9]
[1] Contributor (2015) The best video artists working today. Available at: http://www.highsnobiety.com/2015/08/18/best-video-artists/ [2] Pipilotti Rist. Ever is Over All. 1997 (2016) Available at: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/81191 [3] Kick the machine (2014) Available at: http://www.kickthemachine.com/page7/page2/index.html [4] The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica (2016) ‘Apichatpong Weerasethakul | Thai film director’, in Encyclopædia Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Apichatpong-Weerasethakul [5] Kick the machine (2014) Available at: http://www.kickthemachine.com/page7/page2/index.html [6] The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica (2016) ‘Apichatpong Weerasethakul | Thai film director’, in Encyclopædia Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Apichatpong-Weerasethaku [7] CreditsDesign, L.I.P. (2017) Exhibition - Apichatpong Weerasethakul - primitive – Pirelli HangarBicocca. Available at: http://www.hangarbicocca.org/en/exhibition/apichatpong-weerasethakul-primitive/
