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Paul Pfeiffer’s works are primarily concerned with the mass media phenomena of our globalised society, such as celebrities, sports spectacles and cinema classics. Pfeiffer works entirely on the basis of existing images, as well as film and sound sequences. He uses digital processing techniques to manipulate original images in various ways, presenting them to us from new viewpoints. In short, Pfeiffer raises questions of identity, self-fashioning and mass media dependence.
24 Landscapes (2000/2008) is a series of simple, often unfocussed seaside photographs redolent of casual holiday snapshots. Only experts are likely to recognise them as sets for the portrait shots of Marilyn Monroe created in 1962 by George Barris on a Californian beach. Pfeiffer has digitally wiped all traces of the cinema star from his photographs and has instead reconstructed the background. In this way, he presents the beaches as empty backdrops that become landscape images in their own right.
For the video Caryatid (2009) Pfeiffer manipulated images of professional wrestlers lying exhausted on the ground after a fight. By removing them from their surroundings and selecting a carefully cropped image, the sweat-drenched figures appear as though they had just been engaged in a sexual act rather than in martial combat.
Pfeiffer explores the influence of mass media in Live from Neverland (2006). Here, a monitor shows Michael Jackson’s original denial of child molestation – a charge he was acquitted of in 2005. Pfeiffer has replaced the pop star’s original denial with the soundtrack of a group of young people chanting. Their solemn chant in the style of an Ancient Greek choir is projected onto the wall.
Another mass venue pinpointed by Pfeiffer is the classic situation of the football stadium. His 2009 installation Vitruvian Figure consists of the architectural model of a sports arena bounded at the corners by mirrored walls. Viewers peering over the edge of the arena glimpse the entire Wembley stadium in the reflection.
160 pages, 191 ill., hardcover
German/English
2011, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern
ISBN 978-3-7757-3152-2
€ 25,00
