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11/2/2015

Omer Fast

MOCAK - Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, Krakow

Curated by: Maria Anna Potocka, Delfina Jałowik

The exhibition at MOCAK will be the first comprehensive presentation of Omer Fast’s work in Poland. We will be showing four video installations: Everything That Rises Must Converge (2013, 55 min), Continuity (2012, 40 min), 5000 Feet Is the Best (2011, 30 min) and Looking Pretty for God (2008, 27 min). MOCAK bought the last of these works in 2013. The exhibition Omer Fast is a part of the programme of exhibitions within which we organise individual individual displays of works by artists represented in the MOCAK Collection. We would like to show a broader artistic context of the works that we have in our Collection.

Omer Fast uses film in versatile ways. His virtuosity is dazzling both in its perfection and the insidiousness of his message. In Fast’s films, the plot often takes place on a number of levels. Scenes that take place in reality clash with imagined or remembered ones. At times, the action embarked on ‘sneaks out’ of control, to be replaced by a situation from the film set – casual comments by the actors, technicians or the director himself. It feels as though we have crossed over to the other side of the screen, which for those shooting the film probably acts as a mirror.

The central theme of Omer Fast’s films is man’s treatment of himself. The artist is interested in what we do with our lives, how we distort them, how we allow ourselves to be deformed and to succumb to harmful circumstances. Omer opts for authentic protagonists, enmeshed in the events around which the plot develops. In one of his films, Spielberg’s Schindler’s List is the field of observation, in another the war in Afghanistan, in others yet – a funeral parlour and a porn film studio. All the protagonists – or rather the inspirers of Omer’s psychological analysis – have experienced extreme situations.

Fast does not deal in standard trauma where there is a brutal cause and a damaged victim. His protagonists have been hurt but they do not want to go back to their previous, ‘healthy’ state. They have become different people who now look for new values and meaning in their new incarnation. Their search may appear to be self-deception but is in fact self-defence. In Fast’s films trauma is not pain but creation.

Omer Fast conducts anthropological research, employing the analytical possibilities of enhanced film. The results of his investigation are moving and profoundly steeped in bitter humanism.

Image: Omer Fast, Everything at Rises Must Converge, 2013, digital film, courtesy of gb agency Paris, Arratia Beer Berlin and Dvir Gallery Tel Aviv

Press Contact:
Anna Piotrowska, piotrowska@mocak.pl

Opening: 12.02.2015 at 6 pm

MOCAK
Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow
Tuesday – Sunday, 11 am – 7 pm.

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