Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist gets German art award

Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist has won this year’s Wolfgang-Hahn arts prize, which is awarded by the Modern Arts Society of the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany.

Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist has won this year’s Wolfgang-Hahn arts prize, which is awarded by the Modern Arts Society of the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany.

Cologne city authorities announced their choice Monday and said the award ceremony for the $11,000 prize will take place on November 10.

The society described the Swiss video, film and performance artist as one of the “most innovative and refreshing proponents of contemporary art.”

The development of video art in Switzerland is closely linked with Rist and her work has been on show at New York’s Guggenheim Museum and San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art.

“The work of Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist successfully extends the vocabulary of the music video genre into fine art by suspending the viewer’s reality through experimentation, lush colours and expressive, provocative images,” as one critic wrote about Rist’s exhibition in Santa Fe a year ago.

She began her career in video by designing and building sets for rock bands. She later became involved with the all female rock band, Les Reines Prochaines (The Next Queens).

“I don’t think of myself exclusively as an artist. I was originally interested in pop music…When I started making videos, the art world claimed me for itself,” she once said.

Rist rejects documentary style and polished perfection in order to create surreal, subjective effects through new video technology.

She employs rapid editing, super-saturated, computer-altered colours, and shifting camera angles. She says, “I see video as behind-glass paintings that move.”

From staff and wire reports.