Lot 32: PAUL PFEIFFER

Live Evil (Kuala Lumpur)
Signed “Paul Pfeiffer” and numbered of six on the DVD . This work is from an edition of six plus two artist’s proofs and is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.

Screen: 1 1/2 x 2 in. (3.8 x 5 cm); armature: 2 5/8 x 3 1/2 x 4 1/4 in. (6.7 x 8.9 x 10.8 cm).

DVD , LCD screen and plastic armature.

2002

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, ed., Paul Pfeiffer, Chicago/Cambridge, 2003, p. 10 (illustrated) and p. 20

Carlier/ Gebauer, Berlin

"Live Evil presents a shadowy image of a dancing Michael Jackson split in half and reflected onto himself, producing a figure resembling a skeleton or a Rorschach pattern. […] The figure is both overemphasized and dissolved at once, creating an unsettling corporeal entropy. […] As it glides horizontally, the robotic, refracted image of Jackson similarly emits bursts of reflection and light (undoubtedly from one of his signature gilded costumes) that ultimately collapse back into the dark “center” of the figure. The ecstatic body, the agonized body, and the disappearing body coalesce into a single spectral form in Pfeiffer’s new representations of the human being. Paul Pfeiffer’s work uncovers and displays a new human being, an entity that is there and not there, represented yet absent, perpetually on the verge of being both uncomfortably present or imminently extinct. He provides a timely reminder that developing and retaining a sense of our bodily humanity is critical as we move further into a world of technological facility and representation," (D. Molon, Corporealities, Paul Pfeiffer, New York, 2003, pp. 20-21).