Alumni Update November 13 – 19, 2023
Silliman University alumnus and multi-awarded Filipino-American video artist Paul I. Pfeiffer’s latest presentation, “Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom,” is currently on view at the Greffen at Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles, California from November 12, 2023 until June 16, 2024.
“Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom” is a coming together of 25 years of the multi-disciplinary practice of Pfeiffer. His latest work celebrates the artist’s incisive work that investigates ideas of extravagance, belongingness, and character. It brings together Pfeiffer’s more than 30 works and debuts a new commission, “Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom,” as a first retrospective of the artist’s multi-disciplinary practice.
Pfeiffer’s work interprets our fascination and obsession with celebrity culture, unloading how collective consciousness is shaped and manipulated through his masterful editing of video footages. Pfeiffer demonstrates how desire, heroism, and worship operate as part of the mechanisms of art, religion, politics, and nationhood.
Pfeiffer is a New York City-based artist who has been making work in video, photography, installation, and sculpture since the late 1990s. Known for his innovative manipulation of digital media, Pfeiffer’s groundbreaking work in video, sculpture, and photography uses recent computer technologies to dissect the role that mass media plays in shaping consciousness.
Pfeiffer was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1966 but spent most of his childhood in the Philippines.
Paul is the son of the late Prof. William Pfeiffer and 2005 Outstanding Sillimanian Awardee Prof. Ruth Imperial-Pfeiffer. His parents served separate terms as directors of SU’s former School of Music and Fine Arts, now known as the College of Performing and Visual Arts (COPVA). He completed his elementary (1978) and high school (1982) education in SU.
Paul Pfeiffer, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (30), 2015, fujiflex digital C-print, 48 x 70 in. (121.9 x 177.8 cm). © Paul Pfeiffer. Courtesy the artist; Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid; Perrotin; and Thomas Dane Gallery, London.
