The Shadow Catcher–Paul Pfeiffer
Charles Giuliano
This exhibition of videos, altered photographs, dioramas and laser produced objects, by Paul Pfeiffer, (born Honolulu, 1966), expands and shrinks from enormous, wall mural scaled projections, to small screen, LCD monitors. Like Alice in Wonderland’s "Eat Me," "Drink Me," we find ourselves exploding and contracting from macro to micro. Some images are huge and sprawling while others are tiny, intimate and suck us in.
There is another element of absence. Often something important is missing from the works on view at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center through April 6. This first museum level, solo exhibition by the first recipient of the Bucksbaum Award of the 2000 Biennial of the Whitney Museum seems both large and small, rich or thin, depending upon how you look at or think about it.
Even given the wild juxtapositions of scale the installation appears oddly sparse. It doesn’t take that long to absorb the content of the work. Despite the fact that a number of the pieces involve video loops that one might, hypothetically, contemplate for an unlimited amount of time.
An element of the work is a test of our attention span. After we have seen through the run of a video loop, or perhaps even several sequences, what triggers the break off point? How long do we determine is necessary to fully experience the enormous conflated sunrise and sunset that was shot on a beach in Provincetown? Surely, we have enjoyed these sublime moments, but, in real time, they are fixed experiences. The sunset, for example, after its dramatic impact fades to dark night which is a natural terminator. But here, in, Study for Morning After the Deluge, a title that references a paintings by J.M.W. Turner, there is no such timing device as dawn is endlessly conflated with dusk. It recalls the timelessness of experiencing Michelangelo’s Medici Chapel with its four, neo platonic signifiers of dawn and dusk, night and day.
One of the most compelling works is rather small. On a tiny monitor we see the Stanley Cup, the enormous trophy awarded to the annual champion of professional hockey, looping the rink. Seemingly floating aloft. The essence of victory in a hard fought tournament. As a fan of the Boston Bruins during their glory years it is an image that one relates to with a mix of nostalgia and joy. But here, without the beloved former captain, Phil Esposito. No, just the enormous, silver, engraved object, unconnected to any player, takes on a life of its own. The very essence of the competition stripped of all other information.
Because of its my associations with that sport, object, and past experience it was easy to connect evoking fascination and joy. And it is the absence of such precise direct connection which rendered other works by Pfeiffer remote, esoteric and befuddling. All of the objects did not convey equal pleasure.
Some of the works I have come to understand by reading the catalogue with its superb and thoughtful essays. Perhaps, I could have spent more time reading the wall labels. But I am usually reluctant to do that. I have a built in resistance to reading on my feet. Anything other that a quick and concise label takes the comfort zone of a seated position, a cup of tea, and regular breaks or pits stops.
There is a side or me that feels that art should be primarily visual. That having to explain or read a dense text somehow diminishes the work. Underscores the very apparatus that attracted me to the visual arts in the first place. Trusting what is visible.
But Pfeiffer often undermines that trust by removing something. The work is often about absence rather than presence. It cuts back to how I hated musical chairs as a kid because of that terrible anxiety of not finding a seat when the music stops. It was not my favorite game. In a similar manner Pfeiffer’s work makes me uncomfortable and insecure. He seems to press my buttons and invade my space. I am finding that happening to me a lot in recent exhibitions particularly when the work requires interaction. In this case, challenging the length and intensity of our involvement. Art as a kind of liar’s poker game. And I am just not much of a gambler.
Take, for instance, Pfeiffer’s enormous video projection of a room. Initially, it just made me shrug. Until Astrid asked me if I had gone up and looked in the little hole in the wall. "What hole," I exclaimed. Then I notice people lining up for a peep. So I did and saw a tiny diorama of the same room being projected in real time by a surveillance camera. Later, I learned that it was a reconstruction of a set from a horror film.
Similarly, vitrines with the tiny, wire chairs stacked onto a table top meticulously reproduced an image from the film Poltergeist. How was I supposed to know that? Reading Lawrence Chua’s essay I learned that the work had been produced through a complex process involving laser-fused polyamide powder. Bet you didn’t know that. I learned that the computer generated chairs and tables were first exhibited in 2000. Actually, I recall seeing them on several prior occasions. The artist has subsequently induced several individuals to create simulacra of his fragile and complex object. A couple in Thailand carved them from wax. In Bangkok a restaurant worker whittled them from soap. A former student wove them from grass. And, get this, an inmate in New Mexico, "sculpted one out of toilet paper." Unbelievable.
OK, fascinating. But just what have I learned from that information. I wonder how my life and perceptions are forever changed. That is, after all, what art is supposed to do. Change things and transform us. Art is the opportunity to surrender to this process.
In that sense, I will never quite be who I was before viewing this exhibition and reading its provocative catalogue. Got it. But another deeper, more fearful, and anxious part of me wonders where all this is going.
