carlier | gebauer is pleased to present Incarnator, Paul Pfeiffer’s fifth solo exhibition with the gallery. Pfeiffer’s Incarnator series expands from the artist’s internationally acclaimed eponymous video, which is further brought to life through a series of life-sized sculptures. All sculptures were produced during the artist’s six-month residency at Bellas Artes Projects in Bagac, Bataan, Philippines in 2018. Pfeiffer’s solo exhibition, Incarnator, travels from its institutional exhibition at Bellas Artes Projects curated by Diana Campbell Betancourt.

Incarnator draws its title from the old Spanish word “encarnador” – a term for the person who transforms paint into seemingly live flesh on sculptures. “Encarnación”, or making flesh, is an over six-hundred-year-old technique primarily associated with religious icons and is a separate production process from that of carving sculptural forms. Modern and theological objections to this lifelike use of color in sculpture have pervaded over centuries. In the Philippines, this power can be clearly seen through mass devotion of the Santo Niño de Cebú, a polychrome (encarnado) religious icon which was brought as a gift from Spain in 1521 by Magellan, making it one of the oldest Christian relics in the country. Replicated in many homes and business establishments across the country, the Santo Niño is the most popular object of devotion in the Philippines and is a cultural icon of Filipino Catholic identity.