Surveying twenty-five years of artistic practice, Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom celebrates Paul Pfeiffer (b. 1966, Honolulu, Hawaii; lives in New York), an innovative artist best known for his incisive video work that interrogates ideas of spectacle, belonging and difference. Mining imagery from our media-saturated world, Pfeiffer's work—through iterative acts of cutting, splicing, masking and cloning—reveals the structures that shape collective memory and its repressed desires. Global icons such as pop stars, film actors, and athletes are often the most familiar figures in Pfeiffer's work, where their bodies are located at the intersections of veneration and objectification that undergird mass culture. In Pfeiffer's universe, the basketball court, the boxing ring and the stadium—from antiquity to the present day—not only serve as platforms for grand spectacles but as sites where the body politic (of a nation, of a community, of society) is defined and contested.

This exhibition brings together era-defining photo and video works alongside his latest experiments in sculpture and installation. Modeled after a studio soundstage, the exhibition design is inspired by the artist's interest in the highly fabricated and labor intensive process of Hollywood filmmaking. Throughout his work, Pfeiffer interrogates how images might shape the spectators who consume them. In his own words: "the question always comes up: who's using who? Is the image making us, or do we make images?"

Bringing together more than thirty works and debuting newly commissioned sculptures from the artist's Incarnator series, Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom is the first U.S. retrospective of the artist’s multi-disciplinary practice.

MOCA's presentation of Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom is accompanied by a full-color monographic catalogue, co-published by MACK Books, with new scholarship and critical readings of the artist’s work that offer a much-needed overview of Pfeiffer’s impact and influence to date. This authoritative volume includes essays by Clara Kim, Paula Kroll, and Tom Gunning as well as conversations with the artist and Chanon Kenji Praepopatmongkol and with the artist, Julie Mehretu, and Lawrence Chua.

Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom is organized by Clara Kim, Chief Curator & Director of Curatorial Affairs, and Paula Kroll, Curatorial Assistant, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Lead support is provided by The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and The Aileen Getty Foundation.

Major support is provided by MOCA Projects Council in honor of Mandy Einstein, and Jamie and Robert Soros.

Generous support is provided by and
Additional support is provided by Jam Acuzar and Christopher Ax, carlier | gebauer (Berlin/Madrid), Marcel Crespo, Thomas Dane Gallery, Eder-Zobel de Ayala Family, Jill and Peter Kraus, Elaine Forsgate Marden, Amy and John Phelan, Anton Ramos, Maria Taniguchi, and Fernando Zobel de Ayala.

Supporters of the exhibition catalogue include The Katherine S. Marmor Award and the Blue Rider Group at Morgan Stanley.

Exhibitions at MOCA are supported by the MOCA Fund for Exhibitions with generous funding provided by Jordan S. Goodman + The Goodman Family Foundation, The Earl and Shirley Greif Foundation, and Pamela West.

This exhibition is carbon calculated. The museum reduced greenhouse gas emissions through planning efforts and balanced the remaining emissions through Strategic Climate Fund donations. Support provided by the MOCA Environmental Council.


This exhibition will travel to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao from November 30, 2024 - March 16, 2025 and to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in Summer 2025.