FIELD GOAL

PAUL PFEIFFER's work dissects how the spectacle of sports and entertainment shapes our sense of belonging and identity.

- GWEN BAUTISTA

THE RECENTLY CONCLUDED Paul Pfeiffer retrospective at the Geffen Contemporary of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (MOCA) was filled with works surveying 25 years of the artist’s career. The exhibition “Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom” presented small objects to monumental installations, with some of the earliest pieces produced in the late ’90s preceding Pfeiffer’s breakthrough in the art world. At the turn of the millennium, he was featured at the 49th edition of the Venice Biennale in 2001 and had multiple institutional solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum in New York, the Hammer Museum in LA, and at the Barbican Centre in London—all within the same year.

This period not only marked an important chapter in Pfeiffer’s career but signaled the beginning of a mainstream digital era that is now amplified in his practice as he continues his fascination with the moving image and broadcast entertainment. The ambitious project gathered artworks housed in different collections from all over the world (one installation of scale had to be shipped from the Inhotim Institute in Brazil) and meticulously installed considering Pfeiffer’s desire to disperse experiences through these works to the audience while examining the eruption of image to reality and reality to image. Curated by Clara Kim and Paula Kroll, the exhibition’s title is drawn from Cecil B. DeMille’s opening remarks introducing the epic religious drama, The Ten Commandments, a film that has been cemented in the history of media and has become a regular title in Filipino households.