Mario Pfeifer In Conversation With Gaëtane Verna

Image caption: Mario Pfeifer, still from #blacktivist, 2015. Two channel video installation high definition, colour and sound (stereo). Courtesy the artist and KOW Gallery.

THE POWER PLANT PRESENTS: Mario Pfeifer In Conversation With Gaëtane Verna.

On 17 June 2020, Gaëtane Verna, Director of The Power Plant, joined artist Mario Pfeifer in conversation as part of Art Basel’s Online Viewing Rooms project. Verna and Pfeifer discussed the artist's Summer 2019 exhibition at The Power Plant If you end up with the story you started with, then you're not listening along the way with a focus on how Pfeifer’s work uses reconstruction and public response to expose rising xenophobia and racial division.

View the conversation as well as Pfeifer's timely video work, #blacktivist (2015), discussed in detail with Verna. 

A collaboration with Brooklyn rap group Flatbush ZOMBiES, #blacktivist (2015) is a statement on police brutality, selective enforcement, and the right of self-defense. The 2-channel video installation featured Pfeifer’s music video for the group’s track "Blacktivist" with found imagery and interviews in a startling critique of contemporary gun violence.

Watch #blacktivist

View the Conversation

About the Artist

Mario Pfeifer (born 1981 in Dresden, Germany) studied at the California Institute of the Arts, Städelschule Frankfurt am Main, the Universität der Künste, Berlin and Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig. He lives and works in Berlin. He has had solo exhibitions at institutions including Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, Germany (2018), Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig – GfZK (2016); Ludlow38 New York (2015); Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2015); and Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago de Chile (2014). His work was shown at Berlin Biennale (2018); Mercosul Biennale (2017); Montevideo Biennale (2016); and has been part of group exhibitions at venues including CCA – Center of Contemporary Art Lagos; Museum of Art and Technology, Lisbon and MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main. Pfeifer has been the recipient of Fulbright and DAAD scholarships. While in Toronto for his Power Plant exhibition, Mario Pfeifer was a guest of the Goethe-Institut.