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Omer Fast's manipulated videos speak directly to the contemporary, sophisticated media consumer.

Friday Nov 14, 2008.     By Justin Sondak

Arts + Words Feed

Omer Fast
Runs through January 3 at Betty Rymer Gallery
Fast's manipulated videos have a skeptical, post-modern sensibility speaking directly to the contemporary, sophisticated media consumer. "Looking Pretty for God (After GW)" lets us in on the joke, bringing the photography studio into the morgue, drawing sly, sharp parallels between both environments. But as soon as we draw our defenses against these industries of artifice, we're disarmed by a mortician's sober meditation on his waning profession, at times lip-synched (a la Gillian Wearing) by grade-school photography subjects. Even when his technique isn't completely fresh, Fast's flawless execution makes the heart race and the jaw drop. This locally commissioned revelation is paired with "The Casting," a four-channel video which collapses, in two deftly woven interviews, a soldier's personal strain in Iraq with a social melodrama far removed from that conflict.