Caryatid (Mayweather), 2023
digital video (colour, silent)
1 min 8 sec
Caryatid (Mayweather) is part of Paul Pfeiffer’s ongoing Caryatid series, begun in 2004, in which he manipulates video footage of sporting events —sites of mass spectacle that intertwine the dramatic narratives of sports and religion. In this piece, Pfeiffer digitally erases Floyd Mayweather’s opponent from a boxing match to shift the focus entirely onto Mayweather’s solitary body. This erasure creates a palpable psychological resonance as the remaining boxer is cast into a tense, torpid solo performance. The absence of an adversary magnifies obscure physical details, emphasising the brutality of each impact and the visceral toll off an unseen assault.
The title Caryatid references the sculpted female figures of Ancient Greek temples, drawing a parallel between these architectural elements and the structures of racialised violence embedded in contemporary society. By using the familiarity and populism of spectator sports, Pfeiffer delves into the interplay between images, power struggles and social legitimisation. While the repetitive logic inherent to both boxing and the work’s looping structure mirrors the circulation of this violence via digital technologies and social media platforms. In doing so, he questions how the digital circulation of images of racialised violence normalises violence against oppressed groups. By exposes the uncanny emptiness underneath these well-known images, Pfeiffer renders the violence undeniable, forcing us to confront what is often repressed, with the hope of making it not only visible but intolerable.
Paul Pfeiffer (b.1966, Honolulu; lives and works New York) is a groundbreaking multimedia artist known for his incisive exploration of the pop culture image. Working across video, photography, sculpture, and installation, Pfeiffer’s practice examines the relations between mass media, consumer technology and globalisation, offering critical insights into how images shape our perception and experience of the world.
Pfeiffer is the subject of a major retrospective, Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom (2023-2025), organised by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in collaboration with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and travelling to the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. His work is in the collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Inhotim Museu de Arte Contemporanea, Inhotim, Brazil; the Pinault Collection, Venice; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; K21, Dusseldorf; Julia Stoscheck Foundation, Dusseldorf and Berlin; and Pinothek der Moderne and Sammlung Goetz, Munich.
Presented by THOMAS DANE GALLERY (London, Naples).