An exciting new exhibit has opened in Houston. Pipilottie Rist: Pixel Forest and Worry Will Vanish beautifully blends the myriad suspended LED lights of Pixel Forest with the dreamlike projections of Worry Will Vanish. The result is an enchanting, grand-scale experience in the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.
From March 12 to September 4, Museum of Fine Arts is hosting Pixel Forest and Worry Will Vanish from contemporary Swiss artist, Pipilotti Rist, inside the central gallery of Cullinan Hall. The surreal artist has been renowned since the 1980s for her abstract video art installations, which often employ new technologies to suffuse spaces with vibrant visual imagery.
“Her work pushes the boundaries between video and the built environment, exploiting new technologies to create installations that fuse the natural world wtih the electronic sublime,” the Museum of Fine Arts writes on its website.
“Pipilotti Rist: Pixel Forest and Worry Will Vanish also demonstrates Rist’s profound engagement in what it means to be human in the cosmic cycle of generation and regeneration.”
Previously, Rist’s two works were separate pieces. Pixel Forest, which Rists has compared to “a digital image that has exploded in space”, features 3,000 hanging, color-changing LED lights. Here, visitors are invited to wander through the electronic “forest”.
The experience draws a parallel to MFAH’s permanent exhibit, Yayoi Kusama’s Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity. Kusama uses a network of mirrors to create an illusion of infinity, or otherwise boundless twinkling galaxies unfolding before the eyes.
Worry Will Vanish is projection-based, audio-visual installation that unifies nature and body in a dreamlike experience where visitors can plop themselves down on pillows to take it all in.
Pixel Forest and Worry Will Vanish opens at MFAH on Sunday, March 12.