Pfeiffer's provocative images not meant to be pretty

By Victoria Gail-White
Advertiser Art Critic

•	Paul Pfeiffer: Video, Photographs and Sculpture 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, noon to 4 p.m. Sundays Through Feb. 1 Contemporary Museum 526-0232

Pfeiffer has been internationally recognized for his innovative use of computer and video technology and received the first Bucksbaum Award at the Whitney Biennial in 2000. He also represented the United States in the Cairo Biennial last month.

Many of Pfeiffer's works are based on popular images from sports (primarily boxing and basketball events), film and popular culture. These images are then manipulated and altered almost beyond recognition—although something vaguely familiar remains. It is this facet of Pfeiffer's art that gives it a spooky quality. He is concerned with idolatry and the way we crucify our heroes, the repetition of experiences in life and the absence of life. His titles reveal some the masters that inspire his art, e.g., J.M.W. Turner, Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Durer.

"I am interested in spectacle," he said, "and in a very extreme kind of visual environment: a million people watching one person, and how it relates to our past history and the Roman Coliseum, for instance." Images of people today are unlike those of any other time. Pfeiffer works intuitively, and in some cases erases the heroes from the video loops and photographs.

In "The Long Count," a triptych video series, prizefighter Muhammad Ali and his opponents Sonny Liston, George Foreman and Joe Frazier become aqueous shadows moving in the ring. Pfeiffer painstakingly removed the fighters and shifted the focus to the crowd.

"Live Evil" is mirrored in both the image and title. In it, Michael Jackson's dancing figure is split and reflected. The image morphs into a sci-fi figure, an alien with multiple arms, more machine than man. This video is housed in a small screen. If it were life-sized it could be terrifying.

The largest and most recent work in the exhibit, "Morning after the Deluge," is a 20-minute video of a beautiful sunrise and sunset over the Atlantic Ocean at Cape Cod. However, the sun does not move; it remains in the center while the waves, sky, horizon and birds move. We are left with an experience of questioning the familiar. What planet are we on? What is missing from viewing this video properly are places to sit.

Although the video portions of the exhibit appears wireless, they aren't. "Half of the artwork is behind the walls," says Pfeiffer. The wires that connect to the many small video screens in this exhibit have been hidden.

"Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse," a series of eight digital Duraflex prints, represents a "photographic project in progress," says Pfeiffer. Here, figures are removed or altered. He has erased the figure of Marilyn Monroe that was originally photographed in classic outdoor settings. In others, the basketball players' identifying numbers have been erased along with other players that were originally in the picture frame. History is changed.

What appears at first glance to be a harmless and charming set of bent cane chairs precariously balanced on top of a table in the sculpture "Poltergeist" is really a testimony to the power of technology. It is one solid piece of laser-fused polyamide powder. "If you look under a microscope, you cannot tell how it was made," say Pfeiffer. "It has layers like a tree trunk."

A company in California helped him create this three-dimensional object programmed into a computer from Pfeiffer's two-dimensional drawing.

In a box filled with plastic powder, two laser beams came together and generated enough heat to fuse the particles into the sculpture that we see in the vitrine. It, like us, is made of dust.

Pfeiffer's focused manipulation and distortion of popular images gives his work a somewhat sinister aspect. Yet it also asks important questions about our future as we continue to discover that we can no longer trust our eyes to see the truth.