Global icons and golden moments in American history are memorialised in American sculptor and photographer Paul Pfeiffer‘s first U.S. retrospective at MOCA, Los Angeles.
The 25-year survey includes works from every phase of his career from archival photography and videos to the artist’s more recent experiments in sculpture and installation.
Videos of hyped-up crowds surrounding Muhammad Ali’s boxing ring, Justin Bieber is re-modelled as a Christ-like sculptural bust, and a video shows Michael Jordan falling to the floor upon learning that his team, the Chicago Bulls, won the 1996 NBA Championship.
Yet Pfeiffer, a master manipulator, has reconstructed, looped, and rewinded broadcast sport as we know it—some clips are without sound, others are missing imagery, to rehash the memory of these cultural moments, devoid of pageantry, adrenaline, and community.
In The Long Count (2000-2001), archival broadcast footage of Muhammad Ali’s most famous matches are broadcast in a trilogy of video works with the fighters digitally erased. While a still from the silent video Fragment of a Crucifixion (After Francis Bacon) (1999) showing the Charlotte Hornets player Larry Johnson on the court leaves viewers guessing whether he’s reeling in victory or pain.
Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom is on view from 12 November 2023 through to 16 June 2024.
Main image: Paul Pfeiffer, Fragment of a Crucifixion (After Francis Bacon) (1999) (Still). Video installation (color, silent, 0:05 minutes looped), with projector and mounting arm. 50.8 x 12.7 x 50.8 cm. © Paul Pfeiffer. Courtesy the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid; Perrotin; and Thomas Dane Gallery, London.
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