Some conceptual art doesn’t need to be seen to be understood: the physical form is secondary to the idea. “Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom”—on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago—makes a brilliant case for another kind of conceptual work, one where meaning is located less in intellectual premises than in how they unfold over time.
Pfeiffer, whose practice has spanned video, photography, sculpture, and sound during the roughly 25 years represented here, has consistently worked to subvert the spectacle of mass media. Drawing on the profane iconography of celebrity, he has covered protagonists of sports and pop music from Muhammad Ali to Justin Bieber. The point is not the individual qualities of these figures but their recognizability, as Pfeiffer’s project is one of defamiliarization.
In this retrospective, most works take the form of loops, displayed via intentionally obtrusive apparatuses; they range from soundless clips on tiny LCD monitors to room-sized installations of immersive sound and video. One example in the latter mode, Three Figures in a Room (2015–18), adapts the infamously overhyped 2015 “Fight of the Century,” Floyd Mayweather Jr. versus Manny Pacquiao. In a dark room, two sets of folding chairs face two projections set at right angles. At right is the match, its sound eerily reduced to the boxers’ footsteps and physical contact. At left, the same image appears on a monitor inside a room crowded with props, which proves to be a sound studio where foley artists perform the artifice required to make the footage feel more real. Next door, two works from Pfeiffer’s Caryatid series revisit the same material: both consist of tube TVs, displayed on low shelves as if in someone’s living room; their clear plastic housings show the tangle of wires behind the screen. Each presents an edited version of the fight with one boxer digitally erased, splitting the fight into two. Alone, each moves as if dancing under a barrage of invisible blows: any initial comedy in the situation fades with the realization that the onslaught will never end.
Courtesy of the artist; Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid; Perrotin; and Thomas Dane Gallery, London
What makes Pfeiffer’s best works so potent is the focused economy of their gestures, his ability to build ambiguity through subtraction and repetition alone, turning a scream of triumph into a gasp of agony. At times, the artist becomes a victim of his own success. Red Green Blue (2022), with its imposing scale and ultrahigh production value, borders uncomfortably on the gesamtkunstwerk spectacle it sets out to critique. But the way Pfeiffer has reconfigured the MCA’s fourth floor shows that he remains as sharp as ever. Often, these galleries—large enough to have hosted surveys describing whole regions and eras—are organized in a single loop around the central atrium, providing a clear sequence for their curatorial narratives. Pfeiffer’s floor plan instead begins with a choice between two dead-end paths: left, toward the roar of a sound installation, or right, toward a series of photographs and silent videos. Like many of the daily binaries we face—between two teams, types of pizza, or brands of toothpaste—this choice is illusory. The configuration’s real purpose is to extend engagement beyond the first impression: you pass once going in and again coming back, each piece deepened by the information added in the interval.
What remains to be seen is how the meaning of Pfeiffer’s work—and the direction of his future projects—will be altered by the evolution of technology. What will be the inescapable images of the coming decades? Will he find a way to make our self-reinforcing illusions visible to us when we can generate them ourselves without effort? This is essential work.
“Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom”Through 8/31: Tue 10 AM–9 PM; Wed–Sun 10 AM–5 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 220 E. Chicago, visit.mcachicago.org/exhibitions/paul-pfeiffer-prologue-to-the-story-of-the-birth-of-freedom, suggested admission, Chicago residents $19, Chicago students, teachers, 65+, $10, non-Chicago residents $22, non-Chicago students, teachers, 65+, $14
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