Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist shouts for help in several languages, adding, ‘I am a worm and you are a flower!’ as she reaches up from a burning pit of lava in this 1994 video at the New Museum. Part of Rist’s retrospective exhibition, it’s a tiny but powerful appeal to our empathic natures. (On the Lower East Side through Jan 15th).
French artist Antoine Catala contributed a standout piece to the New Museum’s Triennial last spring by commissioning an ad agency to work on a campaign to promote empathy in an info-saturated age. With similar humor, the man absorbed in his cell phone here is not only acting distant but has the word stitched onto his body in happy, puffy letters. (At Chelsea’s Marlborough Gallery through July 31st.)
Antoine Catala, Feel Images (Distant), digital photograph on suede fabric, cotton, wood, batting, 72 x 48 x 5 ¼ inches, 2015.
