冬の风景 (Winter Landscape)

Pipilotti Rist started her projections on painting series in 2011 and has continued to refine the intricate interplay between video art and oil painting ever since. Like a painter using her brush and oil paint, Rist applies the color palette of her video art to ‘paint over’ the painting with light. It is her way of reinterpreting and communication with paintings by different artists from various periods.

One of her latest works in this series uses ‘Winter Landscape,’ a work by the 19th-century German landscape painter Paul Weimann, as its base. Weimann used to draw the same mountain repeatedly—in this version it is covered with snow. The picture in question is serene and calm, but changes entirely when Rist’s video interacts with it. Suddenly we see light and color bursting from the scene in front of our eyes. The painting comes to life in an entirely unexpected and, at first, inexplicable way. Rist adds a new level to the painting with her video work, taking the viewer on a journey into the depths of the painting. Any sense of space and time fades, and we are immersed in the newly created colorful landscape. The interplay between the artistic mediums of oil and video show the strengths of both media. Rist does not simply depict the oil painting in a new way with her video projection, she also creates a new sense of space and time that enlivens the painting.