Friday, 9/26/2008
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5 pm – HDLU CLUB, Trg žrtava fašizma
Omer Fast – lecture by the artist with screenings from recent works
7 pm – Galerija MIROSLAV KRALJEVIĆ, šubićeva 29
Omer Fast: “De Grote Boodschap / The Great Message”, exhibition opening
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A solo exhibition by Omer Fast opens on Friday, September 26, at 8 pm at Galerija Miroslav Kraljević. Omer Fast (born in Jerusalem in 1972 and living in Berlin) is one of the most prominent artists of his generation in the international art scene. His work has been exhibited widely, most recently at the last Berlin Biennial, Whitney biennial and the Manifesta 2008 and is included in collections such as the Whitney and Guggenheim museums in New York, MUMOK in Vienna, and Tate Modern in London.
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Galerija Miroslav Kraljević presents Omer Fast’s new 27-minute video De Grote Boodschap / The Great Message, in which the narration follows a series of everyday, but bizarre situations occurring among the tenants of an apartment building in Belgium: a flight attendant who returns home after an absurd occurrence on her last flight, an old woman who recalls the war, her caretaker in a post-coital conversation with her lover, and a secretive Arab who wants to rent the apartment in cash, six months in advance… Fast’s camera follows the characters like a hidden observer and the strange fragments of the story give hints of the possible answers and of a reading of the whole narrative, indicating above all that in a time of paranoia, of the construction of a “war against terror”, and of media manipulation, there is, it seems, no safety or peace even within one’s own four walls and especially not inside one’s head. Above all, in the video “The Great Message”, as in his other works, Fast questions the ways in which our reality and its interpretation are influenced by memory, the media, and pop culture. The video loop of “The Great Message” functions in the gallery setting as a nonlinear narrative labyrinth and, as opposed to the passive position of the film viewer, here the visitor is led to a broader perception and reflection and to the reading of a multitude of possible levels in the mysterious story.
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Preceding the opening of the exhibition at G-MK at 7 pm, the HDLU Club on Trg žrtava fašizma will host the artist talk by Omer Fast, in which he will present a selection of his works, dealing with a society manipulated by media and with the hyperproduction of the image, the (re)creation of history and of contemporary narratives, which lead the attention from a private to a global social and political perspective.
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G-MK programs curated by: Ivana Bago and Antonia Majača
