Mario Pfeifer / Einzelausstellung
November 6 to December 4, 2011
Opening: Saturday, November 5, 2011, 5 to 8 pm
The NKV Kunstverein Wiesbaden is pleased to present the first institutional EINZELAUSSTELLUNG ('solo exhibition') by Mario Pfeifer (*1981). Film and video installations from the years 2008 to 2010 provide a concentrated overview of his artistic development since graduating from the Städelschule Frankfurt/Main in 2008. A continuum in Mario Pfeifer's work are clear formal and thematic references to other artists and works, mostly from the 60's and 70's, as well as to fathom a thoroughly composed formal aesthetic, which he expands onto the exhibition architecture. His recent and most extensive work, A FORMAL FILM IN NINE EPISODES, PROLOGUE & EPILOGUE (2010), confronts three of his former produced film and video installations. Three photographic works, each referencing one of the installations and reflecting their research strategies and production conditions, accompany the films. Pfeifer's earliest work YET UNTITLED ['PIECES OF NATURE'] (2008) which was his final art school project, can be interpreted as a performance or film production, following actors to an alleged casting. Also the crew and the producer act in front of the camera and finally literally mirroring Jeff Wall's photograph PICTURE FOR WOMEN (1979), a staged production of staged photography.
RECONSIDERING "THE NEW INDUSTRIAL PARK NEAR IRVINE, CALIFORNIA" BY LEWIS BALTZ, 1974 (2009), a two-piece b/w 16mm-projection, addresses an industrial architecture, which the American artist already portrayed in his art book of the same name. The first projection leads the viewer into an 11-minute unedited camera trip through the interior of a metal workshop. An interview with the former tenant describes the historical industrial context. The second projection shows in parallel the reverse browsing of Baltz' art book whereby each book page merges into a montage with the ongoing camera trip. Only at the end, when the camera trip ends in front of the building, Pfeifer lets the montage fall apart into two incompatible frames and a comment on the interrelation between film and photography
In the film UNTITLED ['TWO GUYS'] (2009) Mario Pfeifer follows two young men with the camera through Berlin-Kreuzberg and becomes the cinematic observer of their body language and mimic, which finally culminates in an aesthetic-rhythmic Krumping, which seems to blow up the space. Krumping is an expressive street-dance, which first evolved amongst young Americans to release aggression and to escape gang-life. In his film Pfeifer several times comes precariously close to them, breaking through their physical shelter.
Opening: Saturday, November 5, 2011, 5 to 8 pm
The NKV Kunstverein Wiesbaden is pleased to present the first institutional EINZELAUSSTELLUNG ('solo exhibition') by Mario Pfeifer (*1981). Film and video installations from the years 2008 to 2010 provide a concentrated overview of his artistic development since graduating from the Städelschule Frankfurt/Main in 2008. A continuum in Mario Pfeifer's work are clear formal and thematic references to other artists and works, mostly from the 60's and 70's, as well as to fathom a thoroughly composed formal aesthetic, which he expands onto the exhibition architecture. His recent and most extensive work, A FORMAL FILM IN NINE EPISODES, PROLOGUE & EPILOGUE (2010), confronts three of his former produced film and video installations. Three photographic works, each referencing one of the installations and reflecting their research strategies and production conditions, accompany the films. Pfeifer's earliest work YET UNTITLED ['PIECES OF NATURE'] (2008) which was his final art school project, can be interpreted as a performance or film production, following actors to an alleged casting. Also the crew and the producer act in front of the camera and finally literally mirroring Jeff Wall's photograph PICTURE FOR WOMEN (1979), a staged production of staged photography.
RECONSIDERING "THE NEW INDUSTRIAL PARK NEAR IRVINE, CALIFORNIA" BY LEWIS BALTZ, 1974 (2009), a two-piece b/w 16mm-projection, addresses an industrial architecture, which the American artist already portrayed in his art book of the same name. The first projection leads the viewer into an 11-minute unedited camera trip through the interior of a metal workshop. An interview with the former tenant describes the historical industrial context. The second projection shows in parallel the reverse browsing of Baltz' art book whereby each book page merges into a montage with the ongoing camera trip. Only at the end, when the camera trip ends in front of the building, Pfeifer lets the montage fall apart into two incompatible frames and a comment on the interrelation between film and photography
In the film UNTITLED ['TWO GUYS'] (2009) Mario Pfeifer follows two young men with the camera through Berlin-Kreuzberg and becomes the cinematic observer of their body language and mimic, which finally culminates in an aesthetic-rhythmic Krumping, which seems to blow up the space. Krumping is an expressive street-dance, which first evolved amongst young Americans to release aggression and to escape gang-life. In his film Pfeifer several times comes precariously close to them, breaking through their physical shelter.
unable to withstand its fascination. With the formal title EINZELAUSSTELLUNG Mario Pfeifer refers to what is actually visible in the exhibition and analyses the existence of singularity, the subject in the discourse.
Mario Pfeifer was born 1981 in Dresden, Germany.
He studied at the University of Arts, Berlin and at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, before he changed in 2007 to the class for interdisciplinary art with Professor Willem de Rooij at the Städelschule, Frankfurt/Main. Here Mario Pfeifer graduated 2008 with the film "Yet Untitled [Pieces OF Nature]". A USA scholarship of the Fulbright Commission followed with further training at the California Institutes of the Arts. In 2009 and 2010 Mario Pfeifer was supported by the Goethe Institute, for which he, amongst others, curated a film program. He also received production grants by the Transvideo Studios, USA and the Werkleitz Society. After a four-month residency in Mumbai, India, he took part in a scholarship program of the DAAD in New York in 2010/11. Mario Pfeifer received the Video Art Award of the Film Office Bremen in 2010 and the Salon Video Art Prize in 2011 in London. His last work abroad led him 2011 to Dar Al-Ma'mûn, Morocco.
Mario Pfeifer's films were presented at international film festivals, inter alia in Bilbao, Bangkok, New York, Detroit, London, Toronto, Basel and Berlin. He also presented his work at numerous exhibitions, amongst others in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin, Museum Weserburg Bremen as well as at the Kunstverein Frankfurt and the Zollamt MMK Frankfurt/Main.
Mario Pfeifer lives and works in Berlin, He is represented by the gallery KOW Berlin where his first gallery solo exhibition took place in 2011.
Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden
Wilhelmstraße 15
65185 Wiesbaden
Tel 0611 30 11 36
presse@kunstverein-wiesbaden.de
www.kunstverein-wiesbaden.de
