
Exhibition preview·Bilbao
Guggenheim Bilbao brings Pipilotti Rist's flower-smashing video fantasy to its film gallery
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao opened Pipilotti Rist's two-channel video installation 'Ever is Over All' on 1 October 2026 in its Film & Video gallery, on view through 17 January 2027, alongside new shows by Steve McQueen and Jasper Johns.
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao has opened a new presentation of Pipilotti Rist's celebrated video installation "Ever is Over All," on view in the museum's Film & Video gallery from 1 October 2026 through 17 January 2027. The two-channel work, first made in 1997, unfolds as a dreamlike sequence in which a woman in a bright blue dress walks along a city street, smashing the windows of parked cars with a flower stem. A passing police officer greets her warmly rather than intervening, and the soundtrack - composed by the artist with Anders Guggisberg - gives the vandalism a festive, almost musical rhythm. The installation plays across two screens that meet in a corner, a format that heightens the contrast between the lyrical slow-motion imagery and the destructive act at its centre. Over nearly three decades, the work has become one of Rist's most widely recognised pieces, and the Bilbao museum's decision to show it in a dedicated film space underlines its status within contemporary video art. The Guggenheim acquired the installation in 2013. The Rist presentation anchors a compact autumn programme of moving-image and recent painting at the museum. Also on the calendar is a new show by Steve McQueen titled "66-76-26," which opens on 9 October, and "Jasper Johns: Night Driver," which remains on view until 12 October. Together, the three projects give the museum's autumn season a distinctly media-driven character. For Bilbao, the Rist opening adds a well-known international name to a year in which European museums have continued to revisit landmark feminist video works of the 1990s. The installation's playful treatment of aggression and authority has kept it in steady demand from institutions, and its long Bilbao run gives Spanish audiences an extended chance to see a piece that rarely appears in the country.


