With a deft hand and skillful use of digital technology, Paul Pfeiffer transforms ordinary sports and entertainment footage into mesmerizing and thought-provoking works of art. Editing images, broadcasts, and film to isolate, emphasize, or camouflage their subjects, he disrupts our seamless consumption of his source material, with uncanny results. Although his forms can vary greatly from one series to the next, sustained viewing of his work reveals an abiding interest in the methods used by mass media to keep us under its spell.
I have been intrigued by Pfeiffer since his rise to prominence a couple of decades ago but had only experienced it in reproduction, so I was thrilled to learn it had arrived in Los Angeles for a mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art. In an era dominated by digital media, a large-scale presentation of his art here, at the epicenter of image production, is both fitting and provocative. Featuring photography, video, sculpture, and installation, the exhibition included work both familiar and new to me.
I had always been drawn to the critical edge in Pfeiffer’s work—how it deconstructs mass media to expose the ways our beliefs are shaped in a society that embraces spectacle. When I originally encountered it, I was focused solely on contemporary art discourse; now that I study and write on the intersection of theology and visual culture, experiencing the breadth of his work in person revealed new and often surprising layers of meaning across a diverse range of subject matter. Even in the exhibition’s title, Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom—drawn from a speech by Cecil B. DeMille introducing his epic The Ten Commandments—I sensed there was more to uncover. In particular, as I delved into the play of desire in Pfeiffer’s work, I began to perceive a persistent focus on the religious impulse at the core of the modern spectacle.
In this essay, which appears in print and online in the Fall 2024 issue of Image Journal, I consider the nature of desire as it unfolds through the art of Paul Pfeiffer.
Paul Pfeiffer. Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (30), 2015. Digital C-print on Fujiflex 56¾ x 78¾ x 2¾ inches. All images © Paul Pfeiffer and courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.
Comments