
Known for his highly sophisticated use of digital technologies and new media, Paul Pfeiffer (b. 1966, Honolulu, HI) has created celebrated works of video, photography, installation and sculpture since the late 1990s. Editing iconic images or found footage of sporting events, concerts, or Hollywood films, Pfeiffer explores our culture’s obsession with spectacle to uncover its hidden psychological cost.
A critically-acclaimed retrospective of Pfeiffer’s work entitled Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom recently traveled from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Bilbao and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, where it will remain on view through August 31, 2025. Previous one-person exhibitions were presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2001); the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2003); the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2005); MUSAC León, Spain (2008); the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2009); Sammlung Goetz, Munich (2011); Honolulu Museum of Art, Honolulu (2016); and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2017). Pfeiffer’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Inhotim Museu de Arte Contemporanea, Brazil; the Pinault Collection, Venice; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; K21, Dusseldorf; Julia Stoscheck Foundation, Dusseldorf and Berlin; and Pinothek der Moderne and, Sammlung Goetz, Munich, among others.