DOHA: Walk inside Doha’s Fire Station, a leading art space in the Qatari capital, and you will find a dimly lit space with an immersive arrangement of a bed and armchairs and psychedelic lighting complemented by textile wall art and curtains as music plays over speakers.
Visitors will forget the outside world as they enter Swiss artist Pipolitti Rist’s “Electric Idyll,” which is conceived as a “hypnotic diorama,” according to the show notes, or an all-encompassing digital and physical landscape that acts as an otherworldly dream realm. The display includes new pieces juxtaposed with some of her most celebrated works, including her 1997 film “Ever is Over All,” which won Rist the prestigious award for best young artist at the Venice Biennale in 1997.
Pipolitti Rist is a Swiss artist. (Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Luhring Augustine)
“Electric Idyll,” curated by Massimiliano Gioni, who also curated the 55th Venice Biennale in 2023, offers an invigorating multisensory journey through nature, gender and technology.
Running until June 1, 2024, it marks the second major production of Rist’s work in Doha, following the installation “Your Brain to Me, My Brain to You” (2022), which will remain on view at the National Museum of Qatar until April 30, 2024.
Pixelwald Motherboard (Pixelforest Mutterplatte), 2016, by Rist. (Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Luhring Augustine)
“We approached this show as a complement to the presentation at the National Museum,” Gioni told Arab News. “We focused on presenting an overview of Rist’s career, with work spanning from the 1990s until today. But unlike a traditional survey, in which works would be shown one after the other in individual rooms or chronologically, we worked with the artist to create a total installation, a kind of enveloping environment — or an immersive space, as some like to say — in which works from different periods are shown in dialogue with each other to create a space that is almost a total work of art, mixing videos, sounds, lights, furniture and design.”
Gioni emphasized the immersive and experiential aspect of the exhibition.
Pixelwald Motherboard (Pixelforest Mutterplatte), 2016, by Rist. (Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Luhring Augustine)
“The audience is invited to use and inhabit the installations, so the exhibition becomes very much alive with the presence of the audiences, who literally enter the show and become part of it,” he said.
Inside the Fire Station, a group of visitors congregate on sofas and armchairs, laughing and conversing. Rist’s work has already become a place to socialize and collaborate.
“I think you could describe Rist’s work as a reflection on technology and media: She invites us to reflect on the ways in which technologies shape our dreams and visions, and she invites us to think of technology less as an experience of solitude and alienation and more as an opportunity of community and participation,” Gioni told Arab News.
“There is also a clear desire in her work to make us aware of the beauty and complexity of the universe. The way in which her camera caresses plants and trees or rivers and lakes invites us to rethink our relationship to nature and the universe,” he noted. “And the way in which Rist creates spaces that welcome the audience is also an invitation to think of art as a place where we come together to expand our consciousness.”
