Paul Pfeiffer Awarded 2015 United States Artists Fellowship

On November 10, New York-based multimedia artist Paul Pfeiffer was announced a recipient of the 2015 United States Artists Fellowship, an award which grants him USD 50,000 to pursue creative projects and professional development.

The United States Artists (USA) is one of the largest arts grant organizations in the country, co-founded in 2006 by the Ford, Rockerfeller, Rasmuson and Prudential Foundations. The USA Fellowship award seeks to honor “the breadth of American artistic practices from coast to coast” and acknowledges nine disciplines across the vast field of arts: visual arts, music, media, dance, crafts, theater and performance, traditional arts, literature, and architecture and design. Artistic practitioners are nominated through a selection process conducted by an expert panelist in their respective fields, who collectively decide on the winners based on the rigor of the nominee’s art practice and their contribution to the arts. In 2015, a total of 37 participants were chosen across the nine disciplines.

Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1966, Pfeiffer spent most of his childhood years in the Philippines, where he discovered a passion for art. Pfeiffer relocated to New York in 1990 and quickly rose to acclaim for his groundbreaking practice working across video, photography, sculpture and installation, dissecting the phenomenon of mass media in modern society and the roles it plays on consumers.

Pfeiffer has exhibited extensively in museums and festivals in the US and abroad, including at the 49th Venice Biennale (2001), New York’s Museum of Modern Art (2002), the Solomon R. Guggenheim (2008), the Sydney Biennale (2008), the Whitney Museum of American Art (2001, 2006, 2010), and solo shows in Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and Austria. In 2016, Pfeiffer will be the subject of a solo exhibition at the Museo Madre, Naples.

Denise Tsui is assistant editor at ArtAsiaPacific.