Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom
May 2025
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
TBM Project Management (Outlining, Budgeting, Technical Drawings) and Installation of 26 TBM Artworks (Digital Projectors, 16mm Film Projector, CRT TV, Custom LCD Displays, Multi-channel Sound Systems, Live-camera feed) | Media Player Programming (Mac Mini, QLab, VLC, BrightSign, Micca) | Hiring and leading team of (2) freelance technicians
Curator: Bana Kattan with Iris Colburn
Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom presents 25 years of work from artist Paul Pfeiffer (b. 1966, Honolulu, HI; lives in New York, NY), whose practice interrogates ideas of spectacle and mass culture. By repurposing the tools and systems of media production—including editing, staging, and outsourcing—Pfeiffer recontextualizes global celebrities such as pop stars, film actors, and athletes to reveal relationships between audiences and icons. As the artist puts it, “who’s using who? Is the image making us, or do we make images?”
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Paul Pfeiffer, Red Green Blue, 2022. Photo: Nathan Pope
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Paul Pfeiffer, John 3:16, 2000. Photo: Steven Probert
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Paul Pfeiffer, Three Figures In A Room, 2015–16. Photo: Nathan Keay
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Paul Pfeiffer, Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom, 2000. Photo: Steven Probert
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Paul Pfeiffer, Red Green Blue, 2022. Photo: Steven Probert