Artists

Paul Pfeiffer

Press release

carlier | gebauer, Berlin, is pleased to announce Paul Pfeiffer’s solo show Revelation 21. Engaging with the topics of spectatorship, architectural structures and mass media, this exhibition features a sculpture from the Incarnator series and photographs from the series Temple of Solomon (After Villapando) alongside the heteronomous body of work titled Vitruvian Figure. This exhibition shows for the first time the early prints – large-scale sepia works depicting architectural floorplans of significant Western Churches – in context with the latest sculpture. As Nora Wendl argues: “The Vitruvian Figure(s), 1998–2009, arguably form the most enduring and untheorized body of work in Pfeiffer’s oeuvre, marking architecture as a serious line of inquiry that permeates his practice”. ¹ Following almost 20 years, in 2008, Pfeiffer creates the first model: a miniature of the Sydney Olympic Stadium expanded by Pfeiffer to the capacity of 1,000,000 viewers. In 2009, Pfeiffer slices a model of London’s reconstructed Wembley Stadium to a quarter of the inner grandstand. Reflected by a mirrored glass, this work conjures the illusion of a complete circle.

The to this date final Vitruvian Figure from 2015 is carried out in plywood and forms a half-circle divided by a mirror. The two meters high sculpture is based on the Philippine Arena, world’s largest indoor arena located outside of Manila. This colossal building was built in 2014 by religious organization Iglesia ni Cristo, a Christian church founded in the Philippines in 1914. In the wake of anti-colonial movements, it offered an opposition to the Catholicism imposed by the Spanish colonial rule. Today the arena continues to host the congregations of Iglesia ni Cristo as well as sport events and music concerts.