Paul Pfeiffer’s ground-breaking video and sculpture works explore the power of image culture and reflect how images are made. His works invite the audience to shift focus. The centrepiece  at Hamburger Bahnhof is Pfeiffer’s sound and video installation The Saints, a restaging of the legendary 1966 World Cup final between West Germany and England in London’s Wembley Stadium.

Executed in London, The Saints was commissioned in 2007 by Artangel. Inaugurated in the fall of that year, it was shown in an empty warehouse very near the legendary Wembley Stadium. In the meantime, thanks to the generous support of Outset Contemporary Art Fund, London, it was acquired for the Nationalgalerie Collection. Based on original film and sound materials, this video and sound installation illuminates and re-stages the most important sports event in European post-war history. Paul Pfeiffer hired approximately 1000 Filipinos who gathered in a movie theater in Manila, the Philippines, where they cheered and chanted in accompaniment to a re-staging of the 1966 match.

The overwhelming sound of masses cheering and chanting accompanies the visitor while watching Pfeiffer’s Empire (2004, on loan from Julia Stoschek Foundation e.V.) that shows the real time of the creation of a wasps’ nest over the course of three months. The mental space evoked by the sound also materializes upon encountering Pfeiffer’s sculpture Vitruvian Figure (2009, on loan from Sammlung Goetz), a huge model of a sports stadium.

The exhibition takes place in the context of the Asia-Pacific Weeks. The Asia-Pacific Weeks are supported by the Stiftung deutsche Klassenlotterie.

www.smb.museum/en/museums-institutions/hamburger-bahnhof/exhibitions/detail/paul-pfeiffer-the-saints