Sammlung Goetz

Paul Pfeiffer

May 9 – October 1, 2011

Paul Pfeiffer’s works are primarily concerned with the mass media phenomena of our globalised society, such as celebrities, sports spectacles and cinema classics. Pfeiffer works entirely on the basis of existing images, as well as film and sound sequences. He uses digital processing techniques to manipulate original images in various ways, presenting them to us from new viewpoints. In short, Pfeiffer raises questions of identity, self-fashioning and mass media dependence.

24 Landscapes (2000/2008) is a series of simple, often unfocussed seaside photographs redolent of casual holiday snapshots. Only experts are likely to recognise them as sets for the portrait shots of Marilyn Monroe created in 1962 by George Barris on a Californian beach. Pfeiffer has digitally wiped all traces of the cinema star from his photographs and has instead reconstructed the background. In this way, he presents the beaches as empty backdrops that become landscape images in their own right.
For the video Caryatid (2009) Pfeiffer manipulated images of professional wrestlers lying exhausted on the ground after a fight. By removing them from their surroundings and selecting a carefully cropped image, the sweat-drenched figures appear as though they had just been engaged in a sexual act rather than in martial combat.
Pfeiffer explores the influence of mass media in Live from Neverland (2006). Here, a monitor shows Michael Jackson’s original denial of child molestation – a charge he was acquitted of in 2005. Pfeiffer has replaced the pop star’s original denial with the soundtrack of a group of young people chanting. Their solemn chant in the style of an Ancient Greek choir is projected onto the wall.
Another mass venue pinpointed by Pfeiffer is the classic situation of the football stadium. His 2009 installation Vitruvian Figure consists of the architectural model of a sports arena bounded at the corners by mirrored walls. Viewers peering over the edge of the arena glimpse the entire Wembley stadium in the reflection.

Paul Pfeiffer

160 pages, 191 ill., hardcover
German/English
2011, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern
ISBN 978-3-7757-3152-2
€ 25,00

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Imi Knoebel

Sammlung Goetz

Autumn/Winter 2021

The Sammlung Goetz honors the artist Imi Knoebel on the occasion of his 80th birthday with a retrospective exhibition. The entire spectrum of Knoebel’s artistic oeuvre will be presented, starting with his black and white photographs from the 1960s to his collages made of multicolored paper and his objects cast in concrete and ending with his most recent paintings in acrylic on aluminum. The presentation also includes Knoebel’s geometrical, minimalist works as well as his expressive paintings from the 1980s, which have rarely been shown until now.

Barbara Kasten. Works

Sammlung Goetz BASE 103

Autumn/Winter 2021

The American artist Barbara Kasten has created an impressive artistic oeuvre over her career spanning from the 1970s to the present. At the center of Kasten’s work are her abstract, geometric color photographs from the 1980s, which explore the interplay of light and dark and afford new spatial experiences. The Sammlung Goetz, which has extensive holdings of works by Kasten, is mounting the artist’s first solo exhibition in Europe in cooperation with the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg. A selection of the extensive retrospective will be on view in the Sammlung Goetz in Munich.