The Beaux-Arts de Paris are pleased to welcome with Paris+ by Art Basel the project of Omer Fast and the gallery gb agency within the Sites sector of the modern and contemporary art fair.
The Karla exhibition is built on archetypes in which masks, ghosts and characters tell stories of the past that illuminate the present, time loops between documentary and fiction.
Karla's face, 2020 (video hologram) floats in a room. The real Karla works at filtering offensive images and texts for an internet giant. Her anonymous testimony is replayed by an actress whose face has been scanned to convert each of her expressions and emotions into digital data.
The progressive morphing seems to accompany the fragile construction of the story. Karla, both witness and ghostly presence, tells of her role and her eternal mission to suppress ever more unbearable images. An installation of drawings endlessly replays a self-portrait by Max Beckmann from 1917: copies of copies exhaust the artist's traumatised face, one eye open and the other closed.
Whether they delete or make visible on digital platforms, whether they transgress the boundaries of the living and the dead, Omer Fast's characters provoke systems of power. The artist fictionalises what he sees of our world, its transformations and aspirations. Together, these elements respond to the 16th century sculptures on permanent display in the Chapelle des Petits-Augustins and explore the inherently ambiguous nature of concepts such as authenticity, time and reality.
Photo credit:
Omer Fast, Karla, 2020
Holographic projection and HD video, variable dimensions
Aurélien Mole © Courtesy Omer Fast and GB Agency
Omer Fast, Untitled M.B (Cloud), 2020 Crayon sur papier, euphonium, toilette en céramique, caisse en bois Dimensions variables © Aurélien Mole © Courtoisie Omer Fast et gb agency
Omer Fast, Karla, 2020 Projection holographique et vidéo HD Dimensions variables © Aurélien Mole © Courtoisie Omer Fast et gb agency
