09 Apr 05 by Johannes Pfeiffer
Johannes Pfeiffer artworks

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Pictures for an exhibition

Project conception and construction are the twin poles in the tension that Pfeiffer brings in to play. His installations can be compared to an architectural idea of sculpture: by occupying a physical space, his work transforms it, redefining it as a symbolic space. But if his work re-generates the physical space, it is generated in its turn in a mental space, as the artist operates on the borderline between the internal dimension and the external dimension of his work. In this work, Pfeiffer opens a new frontier, as the title already tells us, metaphorically and metalinguistically, “Pictures for an exhibition”, in tribute to Mussorgky’s piano suite. Just as the russian musician took the plunge of attempting to convey a visual impression of pictures through his sounds, this German artist tries to convey a visual impression of pictures that are not pictures, looking for the two dimensions of the picture through the perceptive and perspective ambiguity of the sloped surface of bricks. A fragment of masonry makes its way down to the wall, as though the wall itself were to become a picture by vistue of some disturbing visual spell. And yet the contradiction remains unsolved, as there is in fact no pòicture, but only the mirage of one, while at the same time the spatial installation becomes deviant in character because it does not invade the space itself, but its visual and perspective perception. And so the work remains balanced on the borderline between presence and perception, vision and object. Andrea Balzola

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14 Jan 04 05:00

Please upload a better picture

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15 Jan 04 05:00

Just brick and nylon? Cool,elegant (in a teutonic way).

East-West
East-West
East-West

Just the summer before the Berlin wall came down this installation featured the swinging walls. Bricks piled up, held by nylon strings, and gave the impression of a solid wall although it was vulnerable, moving like leaves in the wind. The touch of a visitor made the walls swing, later that year the real wall, built in much more solid concrete, disappeared.

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06 May 05 05:00

This looks really interesting work but the photo resolution is too low to appreciate what's going on in the images. You'd do yourself a favour by uploading better quality images.

soluzione lirica
soluzione lirica
soluzione lirica

The pendency of the campanile on the piazza dei miracoli at Pisa has inspired this installation. Numerous strings render the tension on the tower visible and the conversion of the strings in one point form a lyra or harp.