Omer Fast Wins Whitney Biennial Award

An award ceremony will take place at the museum tomorrow, April 29.

by Nicholas Tamarin -- Interior Design, 4/28/2008

Capturing the stories of Iraq war veterans has helped video artist Omer Fast claim the 2008 Bucksbaum Award from New York's Whitney Museum of American Art, the top honor for the 81 artists participating in the 2008 Whitney Biennial. Fast will accept the award at a museum ceremony tomorrow, April 29, while the Biennial continues through June 1.

Fast won for "The Casting," a 14-minute, four channel video from 2007 that is projected on both sides of two suspended screens in a blackened gallery. As the Iraq veterans share their recollections, the piece delves into topics such as memory, history, storytelling, and fragmentation of the truth.

Critic Blake Gopnik wrote in the Washington Post, "It's no news to anyone that the stories that we tell about ourselves and our times are mostly built from fragments and imaginings. But I can't think of any artist who has managed to depict -- you might say deconstruct -- the realities of that construction as subtly, as convincingly or as engrossingly as Fast."

The Bucksbaum Award, created in 2000 by Whitney trustee Melva Bucksbaum, is given every two years to a participating artist considered to have the potential to make a lasting impact on the history of American art, based on past work and works shown in the Biennial.

Recipients are awarded a $100,000 grant and are invited to exhibit at the museum within two years. Previous recipients of the award include Paul Pfeiffer, Irit Bastry, Raymond Pettibon, and Mark Bradford.

A still from the Casting, 2007.

Image courtesy of Postmasters Gallery, New York, GB Agency, Paris, and Arratia, Beer, Berlin.