Paul Pfeifer

Paul Pfeifer is a contemporary artist whose work explores themes of celebrity culture, mass media, and the intersection of technology and humanity. Born in 1966 in Honolulu, Hawaii, Pfeifer moved to the Philippines as a child with his parents, classically trained musicians. Pfeifer returned to the United States to attend the San Francisco Art Institute, and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1987. Moving to New York in 1990, he enrolled in the MFA program at Hunter College and earned his degree in 1994. Shortly after, Pfeifer was awarded a place in the Whitney Independent Study Program from 1997 to 1998.

Known for his sophisticated use of digital technologies and new media, Pfeifer has created celebrated works of video, photography, installation, and sculpture since the late 1990s. Using digital erasure, magnification, and repetition, he samples and retouches images or video footage from sporting events, concerts, game shows, and Hollywood films to enhance their psychological effects. In more recent work, Pfeifer has continued to explore these themes, creating installations that incorporate virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and 3D printing that blur the line between reality and simulation. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Tate Modern in London, among other institutions

Pfeifer’s work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Inhotim Museu de Arte Contemporanea, Inhotim, Brazil; the Pinault Collection, Venice; and Kunst Werke, Berlin, among others. In addition to his artistic practice, Pfeifer is also a professor of digital media at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, where he has taught since 2004. He has received numerous awards and fellowships for his work, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2009.