Bilbao,
Sixteen years after the Leonese MUSAC hosted Paul Pfeiffer’s first exhibition in Spain, which explored his processes of using technology when digitally manipulating old footage from movies or television sporting events, with the aim of erasing the main figures of the scene and thus analyze the role played by the mass media in the contemporary cult of fame, this American artist has returned to our country. “Prologue to the history of the birth of freedom” is now displayed at the Guggenheim in Bilbao, one of its most ambitious exhibitions to date and the largest presented in Europe.
Using very diverse media (from sculpture to photography, through video and installation), this author, born in Hawaii in 1966 and living in New York, continues to investigate the reasons for our love for spectacle, our need of belonging and at the same time of appearing different, but also the roles of the image in contemporary times: it studies the way in which we access them, or consume them, and above all if we are the ones who make them or they determine what we see. we are -or if the construction is mutual.
For a quarter of a century, Pfeiffer has been using old digital editing software, such as QuarkXxpress or Photoshop, to subvert footage from sporting events, Hollywood movies and concerts to try to bring to light the structures that have come to shape our world. collective imagination, to wants and fears that transcend the individual. It is paradoxical that he manages to investigate what unites us through methods normally based on fragmentation or concealment (cutting, masking, cloning) and that his creations have ended up anticipating, for that same reason, video clips and GIFs. to whom we serve massively today.
By examining the psychological and perceptual aspects of experiences planned to be enjoyed collectively, Americans have detected that stadiums and stages have not only been places for leisure, but also for questioning or politically strengthening communities, and that this This has happened since the very origins of these constructions, in Antiquity. Whatever the technique in which he develops his creations, they usually feature celebrities (singers, athletes, actors) revered, if not objectified, by the masses; Through its figures, and what their global knowledge implies, it analyzes how everything that has to do with the audience, in its broadest sense (architectures, broadcasting or post-production of images) has an impact on our way of understanding the own identity, the society in which we are immersed and even our nation. It reminds us, in short, that where emotion prevails, and individuality is very secondary to the group, is where feelings of adherence to certain causes (even distance from others) are exacerbated.
Another relevant aspect in Pfeiffer’s production is her use of very diverse scales, from miniature to almost monumental, so as not to establish predetermined distances between the viewer and her objects and also to make us aware of the importance of our own body in relation to the world and with the information we consume. If his first compositions (videos and photos) demand close contemplation and encourage the viewer’s intimate approach, his latest installations and sculptures approach the colossal.
Given his interest in American cinema, the montage of this Bilbao exhibition is inspired by the temporary architecture of a sound studio, and is useful to put the visitor in the situation: this artist’s production contains almost constant references to filmmaking, to the camera as a device and to certain scenes anchored in everyone’s memory, while the title of the exhibition itself alludes to the explanations that Cecil B. DeMille offered at the beginning of The ten commandmentsa film that was when the most expensive film in history was filmed (in 1956).
In reality, Pfeiffer’s examination of American culture and its expansion responds to a broader approach than what his origins could a priori provide: in his childhood he lived in the Philippines and is well aware of the fusion of cultural and religious traditions of that given country. its colonial past, historical layers that are noticeable in its treatment of national identities, migrations and the visibility of these issues in the media.
The tour of “Prologue to the history of the birth of freedom” begins with video sculptures from the late nineties and early this century, in some cases based on basketball games (Fragment of a crucifixion from Francis Bacon, John 3:16) or in the fighting of Muhammed Ali (The long count). They are presented in a very different way than we usually see these events at home, on small LCD monitors and CPJ projectors, emphasizing that what we see are not the competitions themselves, but manipulations carried out frame by frame, and therefore derived from erasure, camouflage or loop presentation. The artist’s handprint can sometimes be seen, as can the ghosts of the central figures.
In more recent works, such as Caryatid either The four horsemen of the ApocalypsePfeiffer continues to use simple methods linked in themselves to the production of images and the construction of spectacle in sporting events. In the case of this last series, which has been carried out since 2000, we will see NBA players captured in strange gestures and off the court, converted into figures to be venerated beyond their usual context.
In this first section of the exhibition, focused on erasure and montage, we will also find large-scale video installations, such as The morning after the Flood (2003), which incorporates motion tracking software to reorient our perspective of the landscape; and live video pieces Cross Hall (2008) and Self-portrait as a source (2000), who highlight the active role of the camera in the construction of mediated viewing experiences.
A second section highlights another of Pfeiffer’s creative procedures: she transposes well-known moments of popular culture to alternative geographies, races, or genres; So, The saints brings us an immersive audiovisual recreation of the 1966 World Cup final (the year of this author’s birth) between England and West Germany, in which a thousand people in Manila gather in cinemas to watch the match. By replacing the animation of the European fans with the voices of the Filipinos, the artist focuses on how nationalism is manifested in those moments to remember in sports history, and also stopped at the architecture of the stadium as a place of mass rituals, focusing on the history of Wembley, whose origins date back to the British Empire Exhibition of the early 1920s. At the beginning of this century it was remodeled to incorporate state-of-the-art speakers and screens, thereby amplifying the emotional experience of the masses.
The acoustics of a crowd excited in unison is also recreated in Live from Neverland (2006), where a group of students from Silliman University in the Philippines literally recite a televised speech by Michael Jackson: Pfeiffer manipulates the singer’s mouth movements to synchronize them with the student voices, making his message literally universal.
The exhibition ends with the striking series, still in progress, Incarnatorin which he collaborated with Spanish, Filipino and Mexican sculptors of religious carvings to transform Justin Bieber into a contemporary incarnation of divinity, linking tradition and globalization; and with works articulated from the manipulation of images broadcast on television, such as Red, green, blue (2022), in which he turns a stadium into a television studio.
Paul Pfeiffer. “Prologue to the story of the birth of freedom”
GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM BILBAO
Abandoibarra Avenue, 2
Bilbao
From November 30, 2024 to March 16, 2025
