Paul Pfeiffer’s work in the mediums of installation, photography, and video often uses extant imagery as an occasion to plumb the depths of contemporary culture, assessing its racial, religious, and technological dimensions. At the same time, Pfeiffer’s work functions diachronically, establishing genealogies that connect contemporary culture and its many particularities—professional sports, televised game shows, Michael Jackson—to the long, seemingly remote histories of art, media, religion, politics and nationhood.
Pfeiffer has had numerous solo exhibitions at a diverse array of institutions including The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (2001), the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (2001), the Barbican Art Centre in London (2001), Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, MA (2003), The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (2003), The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu (2003), Gagosian Gallery in New York (2004), MUSAC – Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Spain (2008), Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2009), BAIBAKOV Art Projects, Moscow (2009), Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY (2010), Sammlung Goetz, Munich (2011), Paula Cooper Gallery, NYC (2012 and 2016), and The Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila, Philippines (2015), among others.
