SI gratefully acknowledges the support of Bottega Veneta as Main Partner of Walter Pfeiffer. From still lifes to landscapes to portraits, Pfeiffer’s style oscillates between graceful naturalism and playful self-awareness. Organized chronologically, the exhibition brings together photographs, paintings, drawings, videos and collages made by Pfeiffer over the last six decades to showcase the artist’s approach to capturing life’s pleasures, poetics and oddities in images.
Infamous at the time for his frank depictions of gay sex juxtaposed with scenes of domestic solitude and snapshots of friends, Pfeiffer explores the syntax of pictures: how acts of arrangement and modes of presentation generate moods and associations.
Pfeiffer is recognized as a key figure of contemporary photography, having ascended to prominence within Zürich’s countercultural circles in the 1970s. The exhibition, the artist’s most wide-ranging to date, primarily consists of artwork shown publicly for the first time. Swiss Institute is pleased to present the first institutional survey of celebrated Zürich-based artist Walter Pfeiffer in the United States.
