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A friend once noticed Wolfgang Puck removing his shoes at a dinner table before eating, theorizing it as a physical signal separating work and pleasure. Socks denoting pleasure. This exhibition's shoeless desire is “to release some of the social inhibitions” before laying on bean bags, fetal on the floor. Gone the white walls with monitors at 57 inches, current video brandishes attention to setting, using theater’s primitive virtual-reality in which suspension of disbelief becomes an actual suspension of self lost in the mirror of the screen’s silver. The dim theater of shade necessary for Narciussus to see his reflection, hiding his self-consciousness.
Wheras some of the best video being made today openly acknowledges the viewer, from antagonizing (Wolfson) to alienating (Atkins) or even willfully attacking their affective link with its signs (Rose), etc et. al., Rist desires to swallow the viewer whole, to unbirth them, and deliver them into the her amniotic unreality. Rist’s work today feels anachronistic in this sense, an idea of the future that comes from the past - renderings of architectural potential - already a retro vision that in the hindsight actually makes Rist appear different than 10 years ago, even critical. Have you seen this completely CGI advertisement for marble countertops? There isn't a real thing in it. http://vimeo.com/15630517 It’s all the more imporant because its an advertisement.
See too: Petra Cortright at Societe , Ed Atkins at Serpentine Gallery , Rachel Rose at High Art
