Paul Pfeiffer

Paul Pfeiffer, who grew up in the Philippines, studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and at Hunter College in New York, and was a participant in the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program (1997–98), is known for video installations that destabilize the viewing experience. Pfeiffer dissects filmed material into clips, modifies it—for example, by erasing figures or elements—and reconstructs it into brief loops that reframe the original scene’s meaning or highlight its iconic nature. Sports, religion, gender identity, and power structures are themes that frequently surface in the work. Pfeiffer’s thirty-second video loop Fragment of a Crucifixion (After Francis Bacon) features basketball player Larry Johnson, centrally framed in the small projected image and trapped in a silent, triumphant scream that accompanies a quick movement between three different positions. The ball, backboard, and other players have been erased from the image, which frames Johnson in an explosion of flashbulbs in front of an audience that seems distant. The athletic moment is removed from and transcends its original context, and Johnson’s roar thus becomes ambiguous, oscillating between triumph and torment. Pfeiffer’s project references the 1950 painting Fragment of a Crucifixion by Francis Bacon, in which the scream of a dying creature suspended from a cross becomes the centerpiece of the work. Pfeiffer’s Fragment of a Crucifixion also has a strong sculptural quality: mounted on a metal armature, the projector emitting the video image becomes a prominent material component, and time itself becomes sculptural in the way it is compressed and formed into a continuously repeating moment.