English
Until the 29th of May, the CaixaForum in Barcelona is showing exhibition Videoinstalaciones The Casting – Nostalgia, by conceptual artist Omer Fast. The works belong to the Caixa Foundation´s Contemporary Art Collection, since a part of its ethos is showing these sorts of expressions of arts.
Omer Fast was born in Jerusalem in 1972. He studied Fine Arts at Tufos University, and received a Masters at Hunter College. His interest for video installations grew from his ability to express complexity, and to interact with the spectator.
The video installations are works of art which use the relation between the bi-dimensional character of the electronic image, and the tridimensional of the installation, into which he then inserts the image. This form of artistic expression hit the museums at the end of the 1990s, and was questioned for its materialism. Today, the style of art occupies an important place in art history, and some video installations have become important icons.
Fast is known for being one of the most popular video artists amongst the art critics. His visual installations are characterised by a documentation of fiction – an often complex work that requires the creation of texts, which disrupt the story unfolding on the screens, engaging the spectator with the experimentation.
The work Nostalgia is an interesting documentary, dramatised using a fictional story – where filmic narrative interferes with the representation of reality. The story is based on a conversation between Fast and an African immigrant seeking asylum in London. The fiction, based on a real part of his life, is interrupted with apparently repeating images throughout the course of the film. The video installation was co-produced by the South Gallery in London, the Berkeley University Art Museum, Pacific Film Archive, and Berlin´s Verein der Freunde der Nationalgalerie. The Centre for Resources for Immigrants, and the Council for Refugees in London has praised the artist for his sensitivity in the treatment of the issue of immigration.
Casting is a video installation of four channels, which lasts 14 minutes. The video recounts a conversation between the artist and a member of the North American army as it prepares to go to Iraq in 2006. In the video, the official relates two stories, into which Fast intervenes with images to go with the recollections – a date with a woman in Bavaria, and the accidental disparo of a civil in Iraq. The story is told disjointedly, via two screens – with one showing the story of the sergeant and the other, the preparation of the actors.
His work CNN, which is 18 minutes long, takes images of the most recognisable anchormen and women from CNN, and accompanies them with a different, far more offensive voice. The video installation is an exploration of the behaviours of the television viewer – whose powers of perception has been modelled by CNN.
For more information http://obrasocial.lacaixa.es/nuestroscentros/caixaforumbarcelona/omerfast_es.html
Nancy Guzman
If you are spending a few days in apartments in Barcelona and you love art, these video installations from Omer Fast at the Caixa Forum are a great way of discovering something new.
Translated by: Poppy
