Omer Fast: Present Continuous review – teasing takes on sex, death and trauma
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead
This mesmerising collection of film and video work by the Israeli artist is full of dangling clues and subliminal messages, playing fast and loose with our credulity
"Everything is wrong: askew, false, unfamiliar or unaligned," writes novelist Tom McCarthy in an essay on Omer Fast, the Israeli-born, Berlin-based artist whose work is now being presented in a travelling European survey at Baltic in Gateshead.
Filling two floors in a series of pitch black, carpeted installations, this selection of seven film and video works made since 2000 covers themes of sex and death, foreign wars and domestic violence. Fast also looks at memory and perception, loss and its traumatic aftermath, and where reality might be found. We know it is out there somewhere.