The good news: Sensational Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist, 40, is doing but a single gallery show this year, and it is happening here in Tokyo, right now, at the Shiseido Gallery on the Ginza strip.
The bad news: Well, I thought there would be bad news, as my first impression upon visiting the Shiseido a couple of weeks ago while Rist was preparing "The Cake is in Flames," and watching as a video camera followed her 10-month-old son Yuji crawling around on the floor, was that we were going to be subjected to one of those sentimental, new-baby-oriented works that first-time-mother artists can feel compelled to produce. Something along the lines of the Rita Ackerman children's storybook show at Parco several years back, or Faye Wong's recent album of synthesizers and "Mama" infant murmurings. But I was wrong. There is no bad news.
Although "The Cake is in Flames" does focus heavily on little Yuji and the theme of birth, the treatment here is far from sentimental. Rather, this is vintage Rist -- engaging, extreme, surprising (shocking, at times), very colorful and highly entertaining.