RE-IMAGINING SPORT
PAUL PFEIFFER TRAVELS BACK IN TIME TO REWRITE THE PAST.
Paul Pfeiffer, relocated to New York in 1990 after growing up in the Philippines, exploits what’s now become basic technology for his spooky meditations on sport and a culture obsessed by frenzied celebrity. One project, The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse, sees Pfeiffer taking images of situations in sport, some known, others not, and removing them of all contextual detail. He leaves us with a solitary figure, devoid of teammates, a lone ranger watched by the masses in the stands above.
Without context the images are turned from familiar moments suspended in time to eerie re-representations of a single figure. In one (see below) the image was originally a photograph of the great NBA basketball player Wilt Chamberlain scoring over a horde of defenders. Everyone, including Chamberlain, was removed - literally erased - save for a single defender, his arm raised to block the shot. This man, peripheral in the original, was then repositioned to become the focus of Pfeiffer’s reinterpretation - as well as the crowd’s gaze.
Pfeiffer has since explored similar ideas in video, taking sports scenes and imparting similar processes. Check out the short video below featuring his take on the Ali-Frazier ‘Thriller In Manilla’.
