PIPILOTTI RIST

EVER IS OVER ALL

Ever Is Over All is a vibrant, pixelated video installation of fantastical rebellion. Two superimposed projections juxtapose close-ups of tropical flowers with a scene of a woman strolling carefree along an urban sidewalk, carrying one long stemmed bloom. She flippantly swings the flower, smashing the windows of parked cars as a smiling policewoman salutes her.

In a hypnotic staging, two projections juxtapose close-up tropical flowers with a striking scene: a smiling woman strides along an urban sidewalk. She holds a large flower, which she suddenly uses to smash a car windshield. All under the benevolent gaze of an accomplice policewoman. This unexpected gesture, somewhere between gentleness and subversion, becomes a liberating act filmed in slow motion.

With a soundtrack by turns soothing and discomfiting, the slow-motion action oscillates between tranquility and destruction, transforming a violent impulse into an emancipatory poetic gesture. Rist’s anarchistic critique of modern femininity is manifest in the saturated, pixelated images and the magic of a flower turned weapon. The result is a hypnotic exploration of an exhilarating rebellion against convention.

EXMURO is presenting a site-specific version of Ever is Over All: projected onto the 17th-century stone walls of the Aire Publique projection room, the imagery merges with the jagged textures of the masonry, adding a sculptural dimension that contrasts with the video’s floral aesthetic.