Cover image: Paul Pfeiffer: Red Green Blue, still. Single-channel video with surround sound, 31 minutes 23 seconds. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery. © Paul Pfeiffer.

“In Red Green Blue, his latest work, Pfeiffer reveals the whole ball of wax — everything except the center ...”

Roberta Smith, The New York Times

 

“In the artist's new video installation, a powerful and disconcerting juxtaposition of showmanship, spectacle, and ritual.”

Sowon Kwon, 4Columns

Internationally renowned artist, Paul Pfeiffer, who served as the Lamar Dodd School of Art’s distinguished Dodd Chair between 2016 and 2018, debuted Red Green Blue at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York City on November 12, 2022. This video installation, which focuses on the theatrical dimension of sporting events and the colosseums in which they are held, was filmed on location at Sanford Stadium in Athens, Georgia during Pfeiffer’s tenure as the Dodd Chair, and was a collaborative effort realized with support from Dodd students and faculty.

It is the second element in an ongoing series that began in 2019 with Amazing Grace / RGB, a hybrid performance by fifty members of the University of Georgia Redcoat Band at the Apollo Theater in New York alongside a livestream of the remaining 400-person band inside Sanford Stadium. In both works, Pfeiffer underscores the roles of architecture, ritual, and repetition in conveying the dramatic energy of the crowd. During his tenure as Dodd Chair, Pfeiffer conducted interdisciplinary research at UGA in the fields of art, sports journalism, and kinesiology. Of particular interest, Pfeiffer documented and investigated the culture and spectacle of the Georgia Bulldogs stadium, as well as the surrounding landscape and its history.

Paul Pfeiffer: Red Green Blue, installation view. Single-channel video with surround sound, 31 minutes 23 seconds. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery. Photo: Steven Probert. © Paul Pfeiffer.

A timely work, debuting amidst the Bulldogs' second bid in a row for the National Championship, Red Green Blue is a 31-minute single-channel video installation that will be on display at the Paula Cooper Gallery through December 22, 2022. Associate Professor of Art History Isabelle Loring Wallace and Dodd Galleries Director Katie Geha were in attendance at the well-received opening of the work this past month.

The Paula Cooper Gallery describes Red Green Blue as follows—

Titled Red Green Blue after the image display system based on the human perception of color, the film considers how multiple channels of sensory information are brought into alignment by presenting the Georgia Bulldogs stadium as a broadcast studio. This film is the first chapter of a forthcoming three-part installation.

Paul Pfeiffer: Red Green Blue, installation view. Single-channel video with surround sound, 31 minutes 23 seconds. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery. Photo: Steven Probert. © Paul Pfeiffer.

The description continues—

Bombarded with carefully orchestrated stimuli, the spectator is immersed in a multi-sensory experience intended to incite an emotional response. In Red Green Blue, Pfeiffer edits audio and visual recordings of the Redcoat Marching Band performing the live musical soundtrack to a football game, examining the mechanics of the spectacle through close-up footage of band members and their directors during and between periods of play. [..] As with his earlier Caryatid and Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse series, Pfeiffer pivots away from the hero in the spotlight, and through innovative manipulation persuades the viewer to focus instead on the language of spectacle.

Watch a preview of Red Green Blue here.

Paul Pfeiffer: Red Green Blue, Paula Cooper Gallery, 521 West Twenty-First Street, New York City

Exhibition Dates

November 12, 2022 – December 22, 2022

Paul Pfeiffer: Red Green Blue, installation view. Single-channel video with surround sound, 31 minutes 23 seconds. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery. Photo: Steven Probert. © Paul Pfeiffer.

Artist Bio

Paul Pfeiffer (b. 1966 Honolulu) lives and works in New York. Pfeiffer has had one-person exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2001); the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2003 and 2017-18); the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2005); MUSAC León, Spain (2008); the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2009) and Sammlung Goetz, Munich, Germany (2011). Pfeiffer has presented work in major international exhibitions in recent years, including the Performa Biennial and the Honolulu Biennial in 2019 and the Toronto Biennial and Seoul Mediacity Biennale in 2022. His work is 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; and Kunst Werke, Berlin, among others.

About the Dodd Chair

Founded in 1970, the Dodd Chair is a short-term appointment of high distinction intended to honor artists of international standing who have achieved an extraordinary record of exhibition. Artists selected for this position teach and work at the Dodd and hold the rank of full professor, following in the footsteps of Elaine de Kooning, Mel Chin, Willie Cole, David Humphrey, and Lola Brooks among others. The Lamar Dodd Professorial Chair was established to honor the Dodd’s first Chair, Lamar Dodd, for whom the art school is named. It is an integral part of the Dodd’s commitment to excellence across disciplinary boundaries and reflects the school’s belief that arts research is an essential component of the academic mission of the University of Georgia.