A solo exhibition by Oliver Ressler

MNAC – National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest

Curator: Adriana Oprea

2016

Property is theft! (La propriété, c’est le vol!), the famous declaration made by French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1840, serves as the title of Austrian artist Oliver Ressler’s first survey exhibition in Romania. The crisis of neoliberal capitalism is Oliver Ressler’s favourite theme throughout his activity over the past twenty years, which can be seen as an investigation of the fundamentally economic understructure of all present social imbalances.

Focusing on films and video installations, the selection of works on display raises the issue of global warming in relation with the financial crisis from 2008 and the process of rampant privatization that has been taking place in the former communist countries. These topics are presented through the reaction of people and the social movement to them – the strikes, protests, blockades of fossil fuel industry and occupation of factories and squares (Occupy!) that have recently occurred. In the context of aggravating ecological, social and political problems, Oliver Ressler tackles the current economic crisis through a range of kaleidoscopic points of view around one single profound, apparently insolvable issue: contemporary capitalism.

Oliver Ressler’s new 2-channel video installation “Everything’s coming together while everything’s falling apart” was produced for this exhibition with the support of ERSTE Foundation, BKA – Kunst and Otto Mauer Fonds.