Paul Pfeiffer will give a lecture on his work.

New York City-based artist Paul Pfeiffer has been working in video, photography, installation, and sculpture since the late 1990s. Known for his innovative and sculptural manipulation of digital media, Pfeiffer recasts the visual language of mass media spectacle to examine how images shape our awareness of ourselves and the world. Sampling footage from YouTube and other sources, he uses these to plumb the depths of contemporary culture, assessing its racial, religious, and technological dimensions. At the same time, Pfeiffer’s objects and images establish unexpected and profound genealogies that connect contemporary culture and its many particularities to the long, seemingly remote histories of art, media, religion, and human consciousness.

Paul Pfeiffer’s multidisciplinary work has been exhibited in many one-person exhibitions, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2001); the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2003 and 2017-18); the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2005); MUSAC León, Spain (2008); Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2009); Sammlung Goetz, Munich (2011); Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila (2015); Inhotim, Brumadinho, Brazil (2018); and The Athenaeum, Athens, GA (2023). Pfeiffer’s first large-scale retrospective of his work at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2023-24) will travel to the Guggenheim Bilbao and open in November 2024.

This is an Agnes Rindge Claflin Lecture. Sponsored by the Vassar Art Department. 

The event is free and open to the public.