Pipilotti Rist: Worry Will Vanish, Hauser & Wirth

Acclaimed Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist is back in London with a new video installation that promises not to disappoint. You might recall Rist’s visceral 2012 Hayward exhibition, Eyeball Massage, when the Southbank gallery was filled with videos, sculptures, photographs and wallpapers.
Now at her new Hauser & Wirth exhibition, Rist has transformed the Savile Row gallery into a similarly immersive installation which relies on sensory encounters to guide the audience. This is not a new concept for Rist, who normally shows her work in site-specific architectural installations.
In Worry Will Vanish, you’ll be asked to remove your shoes before entering (apparently to let go of social inhibitions, but perhaps also because the artist has covered the gallery with plush, new carpets). Once inside visitors are invited to lie on duvets and cushions which cover the floor, and experience the work from a completely new perspective.
Looking up at the Pipilotti Rist video Worry Will Vanish Horizon (2014), you’ll embark on a journey inside the human body, created by manipulating close up images of skin, creases and the textures of human flesh. Every so often there are flashes of close-up images from nature; blurring the boundary between the internal and the external and exploring our relationship with the world around us, from the particular to the universal.
Rist has previously described her installations as “handbags, because there is room in them for everything: painting, technology, language, music, flowing pictures, poetry”. For this new work she has collaborated with musician Anders Guggisberg so that the Mary Poppin’s handbag is filled with a celebration of sound, texture, colour and the moving image.
Of all the London art exhibitions 2014, this latest video from Pipilotti Rist at Hauser & Wirth will have contemporary art connoisseurs talking