umbrella
west coast exhibitions

“Show the devil a finger, and he’ll take the whole hand.”

 

This quote from the film De Oylem iz a Goylem could be seen as a kind of motto if one were to summarize the two films that Berlin-based artist Omer Fast is showing at umbrella—and thus for the first time in Denmark.

 

Omer Fast has reimagined the umbrella exhibition space by creating—in true filmmaker style—a kind of contemporary mythical set within which he presents the films De Oylem iz a Goylem and The Invisible Hand. 

 

De Oylem iz a Goylem is shown as a classic wall projection. A lone skier has an eerie encounter in the Austrian Alps. What begins as a poetic depiction of the present quickly gives way to a fictional fairy-tale in which the distictions between time and space, life and art dissolve. In the process, the protagonist, played by Swiss actress Ursina Lardi, becomes increasingly haunted by the story told to her by an Orthodox Jew who suddenly appears next to her on the ski lift—a man who seems to have fallen out of time—until his story becomes her own.

 

Visitors to the exhibition can experience the second film, The Invisible Hand, on a virtual reality visor inside a tent—a space within a space.  The film depicts a family’s confrontation with a ghost in the Pearl River Delta in China. In the family’s story, a well-intentioned gesture ultimately turns into a tragedy, and their social rise ends in shame and disgrace.

 

The film was shot in Guangzhou in 2018, commissioned by the Guangdong Times Museum and premiered there, but was banned before the opening. The official reason given by local authorities was that ghosts had ceased to exist since the founding of the People’s Republic of China and that such a film could therefore not be shown.

 

Both films are based on the same material, drawn from a medieval Jewish folk tale. With De Oylem iz a Goylem, Omer Fast has, in a sense, created a European adaptation of The Invisible Hand, and we are delighted to be able to present these two films by the internationally renowned artist at umbrella.

 

 

 

 

Omer Fast was born in Jerusalem in 1972. He holds a BA in English from Tufts University, a BFA in Visual Arts from the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts, and an MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York. 

 

Since graduating in 2000, Fast has had solo exhibitions at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2021), the Times Art Museum in Guangzhou (2018), the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin (2016), the Jeu de Paume in Paris (2015) and the Whitney Museum in New York (2010). His group exhibitions include dOCUMENTA13 and the 2011 Venice Biennale.

 

Fast received the Bucksbaum Prize for his work The Casting at the 2008 Whitney Biennial and the Nationalgalerie Prize for Young Art in Berlin in 2009 for his work Nostalgia. His works are held in various international collections, including the Tate Modern in London, the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

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The exhibitions is supported by Aage og Johanne Louis-Hansens Fond, by Statens Kunstfond and by Den Jyske Kunstfond.