Omer Fast

Omer Fast’s probing, storytelling video work interweaves personal accounts with media narratives. His politically charged subject matter covers issues of race, pornography, and war—both historical battles and contemporary conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fast’s approach as such is exemplified in the 2003 video installation Spielberg’s List, for which the artist interviewed inhabitants of Cracow, Poland, who worked as extras in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film Schindler’s List. The participants' accounts of both the Hollywood taping and the historical German occupation of Poland are juxtaposed with depictions of two increasing indistinguishable sites: the film set and the German labor camp. In this way, Fast mixes sound and image to poignantly confuses fact and fiction. 

Fast was the 2008 recipient of the Bucksbaum Award from the Whitney Museum of American Art. He has exhibited widely, including in solo exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, the Berkeley Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna, the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, and the Frankfurter Kunstverein in Frankfurt. Fast was also feature in dCOUMENTA 13.