The Gospel According to Paul Pfeiffer
The sculptor and video artist talks mass culture, and Nathan Fielder as performance artist?
Pop star Justin Bieber is no saint — well, actually, in Paul Pfeiffer’s art, he kind of is. In an interview in today’s issue, the sculptor, photographer, and video artist talks about his woodcarved portraits of Bieber in the likeness of Christ on the cross, his imagined million-seat stadiums, and the rituals of mass culture. “Emotion itself becomes the architecture of soft power,” he says.
All the world’s a stage. No one might exemplify that age-old adage better than the deeply contemporary (and utterly deadpan) comedian and director Nathan Fielder. Also today, Associate Editor Rebecca Schiffman takes on You Can See Everything, his new documentary about Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes. “Is Fielder a documentarian,” Schiffman wonders, “or is he a performance artist playing one?”
—Lisa Yin Zhang, associate editor
Nathan Fielder Is a Performance Artist in Disguise
As an art historian, it’s hard not to relate what you see in everyday life to history — not in the sense that every lily pad recalls Monet or snowballs bring David Hammons to mind, but in the sense that sometimes art really does imitate life. This happened to me recently, maybe 10 minutes into Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s You Can See Everything.
I watched Fielder hold painful, prolonged eye contact with Elizabeth Holmes, the convicted fraudster whose eerily large blue eyes seem to enact their own kind of performance. Naturally, I thought of Marina Abramović’s “The Artist is Present” (2010). Perhaps it’s an obvious, pretentious comparison. But hear me out: Is Fielder a documentarian, or is he a performance artist playing one? | Rebecca Schiffman
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New Exhibitions at SITE SANTA FE Including Works by Larry Bell
Legendary Light and Space artist and longtime New Mexico resident Larry Bell presents Improvisations at SITE SANTA FE. Also on view: works by Sara Genn in her first solo museum exhibition that includes a commissioned mural, and a solo show of hyperrealist paintings, sculptures, and billboards by LA-based artist Sayre Gomez.
News
- Several museums open their doors for early voters, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani cast his ballot.
- Designed by artisans from Mestiz Studio in Mexico, an enormous ofrenda titled “Twenty Petal Flower” begins to blossom in Manhattan, six days before the start of Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead).
- The grassroots organization Youth Against Displacement calls upon celebrities to boycott the Museum of Chinese in America’s gala over its ties to a proposed Chinatown jail. [Instagram]
Reviews
John Dilg’s Down-to-Earth Reverence
The tranquility of his views, the closeness of his tones, and the evenness of his light bespeak his continual wonderment at existence. | John Yau
Read MoreThe Artist Who Dined Among Lions
California performance artist Bonnie Ora Sherk was a cultural trickster and proactive spoiler in the business of everyday life. | Brian Karl
Read MoreAt 60, a Legendary LA Print Workshop Still Urges Us to Pay Attention
From Robert Rauschenberg and Josef Albers to Vija Celmins and Julie Mehretu, artists have tinkered outside their comfort zones at Gemini G.E.L. | David Rubin
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Bold New Books in Art and Visual Culture from the MIT Press
From activist art and trans aesthetics to lowriders, global skateboarding culture, and Vilém Flusser’s prescient vision of the screen age.
Interview
Paul Pfeiffer on the Spectacle of Politics
“Perhaps the stadium is actually the replacement for the UN as a symbolic gathering point to conduct world politics,” the artist told Hyperallergic in an interview. | Brian Karl
Read MoreMemes
Lula Victory Memes That Make Us All Want to Be Brazilian
Images rooted in queer and pop culture and national pride celebrate a progressive win at the polls and a step back for fascism. | Rhea Nayyar
Read MoreMember Comment
— Denny Smith on "The Cathedral of Learning Is Pittsburgh’s Secular Temple"
Hyper Links
- Cultural heritage or AI garbage? Learn to identify tatreez slop. [Instagram]
- What are towns across the United States discussing at their public council meetings? Data centers and pickleball, mostly. [Hamlet]
- Listen to the sheet music Hieronymus Bosch painted on a sinner’s butt. [X]
- Rhode Island’s mayoral race is a referendum on renters vs. landlords. [New York Review of Books]
Baton Rouge Gallery, Center for Contemporary Art — Surreal Salon 19 Open Call
The annual exhibition celebrating the pop-surrealist/lowbrow movement will share the work of over 60 artists who are hand-picked by juror Lauren YS. $2,000+ in prizes and a Best in Show feature in Beautiful Bizarre Magazine. $35 application fee.
Deadline: November 7, 2027 | wearecreativewest.org
From the Archive
The Evolving Designs of US Voting Ballots
This Is What Democracy Looked Like by Alicia Yin Cheng is the first book of its kind to look at the history of ballot design. | Emily Wilson
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