Paul Pfeiffer

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For the American politician see Paul Pfeifer.

For The Wonder Years character see Josh Saviano.

Paul Pfeiffer (born Honolulu, Hawaii, 1966) is an American video artist whose work incorporates the use of found footage. He studied at the San Francisco Art Institute (BFA Printmaking) and Hunter College, New York (MFA), and has lived and worked in New York since 1990. Pfeiffer is represented by Christian Haye of The Project gallery, New York.

He has had solo shows at the UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2001), the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2002), the Barbican Arts Centre, London (2003), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2003) and The Project, New York (2007).

He participated in the Whitney Biennial in 2000 and was awarded the inaugural Bucksbaum Award. In 2001 he participated in the 49th Venice Biennale.

Pfeiffer's work is time-consuming and meticulous. "Pfeiffer makes a show of removing his subjectivity while investing himself intensely in his work: It can take him four months to produce a scant two minutes of video."^[1]

[edit] Selected works

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2000 - ): a series of photographic images of basketball games, from which all players except one have been edited out.
The Long Count (The Rumble in the Jungle) (2001): a video of Muhammad Ali and George Foreman fighting, from which the fighters have been digitally removed.
Live From Neverland (2007) a video installation, divided into two separate videos, depicting Michael Jackson's 2003 press conference, in which the icon addresses child-molestation allegations, but with the sound removed and replaced on a separate screen by 80 children reciting the King of Pop's words in the manner of a Greek chorus. Pfeiffer's deft editing alternately speeds up and slows down Jackson's tape to sync perfectly with the children's recitation.^[2]