Omer Fast

Omer Fast was born in 1972 in Jerusalem

Omer Fast was born in Jerusalem in 1972 and grew up there. He spent much of his teenage years in New York.

He earned a BFA in 1995 from a joint program of Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, studying English and painting. In 2000 he received an MFA from Hunter College. He then worked in magazine layout and moved to Berlin in 2001.

His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at museums in Europe, the United States and Asia, including the Whitney Museum in 2010 and the Jeu de Paume in Paris in 2015. He took part in dOCUMENTA (13), the 54th Venice Biennale and the 2002 and 2008 Whitney Biennials. His works are held in collections such as the Guggenheim Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In 2015 he wrote and directed his first feature film, Remainder, based on a novel by Tom McCarthy. In 2017 his exhibition at James Cohan Gallery in New York drew protests from Asian-American groups, who called it orientalist. Fast said the work dealt with the immigrant experience, which he linked to his own.