We are delighted to present the third solo exhibition by New York artist Paul Pfeiffer at carlier | gebauer. Pfeiffer, who was trained at Hunter College (NYC), and in the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum (NYC), is considered one of the most important video artists of his generation in the USA. In 2006 and 2007 his works were shown inter alia in New York at MoMA and the Guggenheim, as well as at P.S.1. In addition, in 2007 he also realized The Saints for ArtAngel, London. Pfeiffer is currently represented at the Sydney Biennale, as well as in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. At the end of September „Monologue“, the first extensive survey of his work will open in Spain, at MUSAC, León.

Pfeiffer will be showing three recent works in the exhibition at carlier|gebauer, two of which will be exhibited for the first time. Live from Neverland (2006), Caryatid (Red, Yellow, Blue) (2008) and Cross Hall (2008) are video pieces, in which the character of the installation as an object plays a crucial role. Pfeiffer’s work reflects video formats which are dominating contemporary mass media. Television formats, as well as that of the omnipresent surveillance camera, both of which accompany us in our day-to-day lives, are explored, examining their origins. In Pfeiffer’s oeuvre, these dominant media apparatuses of perception become the starting point for a fundamental artistic reworking. He raises questions about the quotidian hierarchisation and the evaluations of individuals and spaces recorded by mass media events and signified in emblems of contemporary culture. This often occurs through artistic techniques of isolation: by removing the human figures from the image, isolating from the context in which they are embedded, through the repetition of rooms vibrant with meaning. Pfeiffer’s works draw out the eerie and archetypical from the apparently everyday. His art denies the seemingly unquestionable primacy of the visual by reconstructing it in a new modus.