Pipilotti Rist, “Sexy Sad I”, Still 1

In Sexy Sad I (1987), one of Rist’s earliest works, the artist makes ample use of “color smearing,” the phenomenon that becomes manifest after an editing cut when a disturbance in the image moves slowly over the screen until the next image appears. Here a naked light-skinned male body is shown from the neck down cavorting in sepia-toned woodlands with the garish, hyper saturated bars of early video graphics. Dense vertical evergreen trees provide a backdrop.