Paul Pfeiffer

Morning after the deluge is a video installation by New York based artist Paul Pfeiffer. At the core of Pfeiffer’s practice is an investigation into the impact of the digital age on our perceptions of reality and the nature of vision. In this work Pfeiffer turns to nature and takes an art historical subject as his departure point, JMW Turner’s painting of 1843, Light and Colour (Goethe’s Theory) – the Morning after the Deluge – Moses Writing the Book of Genesis. Using real time footage of sunrises and sunsets, Pfeiffer has merged two halves of the sun to form a single image. As the sun remains static in the centre of the screen, the horizon line moves gradually downwards on a continual loop. Taking his cue from Turner, Pfeiffer has taken a familiar subject – the landscape – and emptied it of all points of reference. By making the sun the visual anchor and reversing the effect of the horizon, Pfeiffer destabilises our sense of perspective and implies our physical displacement. Forging a disruption between viewer and subject, Morning after the deluge draws attention to the artifice of digital media and challenges our perceptions of vision, time and space.