Known for his highly sophisticated use of digital technologies and new media, Paul Pfeiffer (b. 1966, Honolulu, HI) has created celebrated works of video, photography, installation and sculpture since the late 1990s. Editing iconic images or found footage of sporting events, concerts, or Hollywood films, Pfeiffer explores our culture’s obsession with spectacle to uncover its hidden psychological cost.
Starting in 2023, a critically-acclaimed retrospective of Pfeiffer’s work entitled Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom traveled from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Previous one-person exhibitions were presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2001); the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2003); the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2005); MUSAC León, Spain (2008); the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2009); Sammlung Goetz, Munich (2011); Honolulu Museum of Art, Honolulu (2016); and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2017). Pfeiffer’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Inhotim Museu de Arte Contemporanea, Brazil; the Pinault Collection, Venice; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; K21, Dusseldorf; Julia Stoscheck Foundation, Dusseldorf and Berlin; and Pinothek der Moderne and, Sammlung Goetz, Munich, among others.
