Lot 476
  • 476

Paul Pfeiffer

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Description

  • Paul Pfeiffer
  • Goethe's Message to the New Negroes
  • signed on the DVD
  • metal armature, cast miniature monitor, DVD with continuous video loop
  • 6 by 7 by 62 in. 15.2 by 17.8 by 157.5 cm.
  • Executed in 2002, this work is number 1 from an edition of 6 plus 1 artist's proof.

Provenance

VERIFY PROV

Exhibited

New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Tempo, June - September 2002 (another example exhibited)
Cork, Fenton Gallery, Losing It, March 2003
Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Paul Pfeiffer, May - August 2003 (another example exhibited), illustrated

Catalogue Note

Paul Pfeiffer's video installations hold icons of popular culture hostage through savvy digital editing. Referring to his work as "video sculptures", Pfeiffer reformats film footage from Hollywood movies and sporting events to catch movie stars and sports heroes in moments of extreme emotion. Often projecting video images only inches in length and width, Pfieffer makes the viewer physically intimate with his works, which critically examine events or human reactions that normally go unnoticed. His editing technique, which digitally erases people, objects, sounds and context shows shaky transitions and editing "mistakes" to communicate to his viewer the physical labor involved in the video's production, a twenty-first century equivalent to brushstrokes on canvas.

Examples of Pfeiffer's films include  Goethe's Message to the New Negroes which uses previously broadcast basketball games as the subject of his laborious edits. Through the iconography of the work, Pfeiffer's portrayal of Hollywood and sports icons suggests a contemporary pantheon of media-based figures of worship