Justin Bieber Torso, 2018 | Gmelina wood and paint | 65.1 x 48.6 x 23.2 cm | Courtesy of the artist and carlier | gebauer | © Paul Pfeiffer, Bilbao, 2024 | Courtesy the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery, London | Photo Ben Westoby

27.10.2024 (pm/red) The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom, the artist’s largest survey exhibition in Europe, with a selection of over thirty works spanning his entire career and establishing him as one of the most influential artists today.

Born in 1966 in Honolulu (Hawaii) and living in New York, his multidisciplinary practice, which includes video, photography, sculpture, and installation, interrogates ideas of spectacle, belonging, and difference. Primarily known for his incisive videos with images taken from a media-saturated world, Pfeiffer examines how images shape the spectators who consume them, although, as he says:

“The question always comes up: Who’s using who? Is the image making us, or do we make images?”

Paul Pfeiffer’s multi-disciplinary practice in video, photography, sculpture, and installation interrogates ideas of spectacle, belonging, and difference.

His deft manipulation of footage from sporting events, music concerts, and Hollywood films, using early desktop digital editing programs presaged the prevalence of GIF’s and the mass circulation of short video clips in our digital area.

Pfeiffer is preoccupied with the architectural form of the stadium or arena to show not only how grand spectacles are constructed but also how the body politic (of a nation, of a community, of society) is defined and contested in relation to these built environments.

• Dates: November 30, 2024–March 16, 2025
• Curators: Clara Kim, Chief Curator & Director of Curatorial Affairs, and Paula Kroll, Curatorial Assistant, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in collaboration with Marta Blavia, Associate Curator, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
• Sponsored by: BBK