Pipilotti Rist: Pixelwald Turicum, Kunsthaus Zurich

Martina Nommsen
Mar 26
2 min read

Updated: Mar 27

Der Rundbogen-EIngang führt in Pipilotti Rosts Videoinstallation Pixelwald Turicum — Pipilotti Rist, Pixelwald Turicum, Eingang

In front of this arch I almost feel like Alice in Wonderland. The playful lettering “Eingang · entrane” swings above its arcade. In front of me lies a dimly lit corridor with a red carpet and padded side walls. I don't see anything but hear a lot. Music, gentle children's laughter, spring-like chirping of birds. As I round the bend, I suddenly become part of an installation that appeals to all my senses.

Elisabeth Charlotte Rist, who has called herself Pipilotti for several decades, is probably the most famous video artist in Switzerland. After studying at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and the School of Design in Basel, her works focus on recurring themes such as the body and sensuality as well as the social position of women. The artist shows this with monumental installations, with the memorable and codependent elementary use of light, color and sound.

After her impressive retrospective «Your saliva is my diving suit in the ocean of pain» at the Kunsthaus Zurich (what a wonderfully poetic exhibition title!), the video installation Pixelwald Turicum by Pipilotti Rist appears as an independent work in the Chipperfield Building on the level of the Merzbacher Collection.

But what do we actually see? What are we experiencing? What do we feel?

Every visitor can and must find out for themselves, because the experience of this installation is fascinatingly individual.

What does the name of the installation tell us? Pipilotti Rist calls the work in the Kunsthaus Zurich Pixelwald Turicum. A forest made up of 3000 illuminated glass bodies. Each individual represents a pixel detached from the overall image.

Turicum is the Latin name for a personal name and can be translated in the (pre-) Celtic sense as “place of Turo”. It is the oldest name for a place that was in the center of today's Zurich during Roman times. With the further development of spoken language, the current city name Zurich emerged from this place name.

So we are standing in a Zurich pixel forest - in a shimmering pixel forest that evades contextualized assignment and refuses to put these individual pixels together to form a larger whole. It is impossible for us to perceive the entire construct, rather we concentrate on individual elements, capturing shades of color, shades of color and waves of color that extend across the bulbous crystal shells and their tactile surface structure that people would like to touch so much. How does it feel? Is it hard? Around? Cold or warm?

In correlation with music and light, the light-emitting diodes emerge as individually playable design elements - their choice of colors underline the pulsating tones of the music, smoothly continue a melody, and transform the room into a red or green sea of colors.