The Gospel: Omer Fast, Max Pinckers & Emmanuel Van der Auwera

Titled after Emmanuel Van der Auwera’s work, which first appeared at the Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève, Switzerland (2024), the exhibition gathers works by Omer Fast, Max Pinckers, and Van der Auwera, exploring the increasingly blurred boundaries between fact and fiction. Each approach this theme from their own perspective: Fast reflects on the act of storytelling, from the strange impact of trauma on memory to techniques of media manipulation; Pinckers questions the subjective side of documentary photography, with staged, cinematic images of real subjects; Van der Auwera evokes the real impact of subjects such as AI warfare, rare earth mining, and virtual companionship, speaking through layers of formal distortion. Together, the three artists offer complementary lines of questioning on a topic which is evasive, and encroaching further every day on all aspects of life.  

Omer Fast’s 5000 Feet is the Best immerses viewers in the psychological and ethical dimensions of drone warfare. Based on interviews with a former drone operator, the film blurs reality and fiction, weaving together staged reenactments and fragmented narratives to create a destabilizing sense of uncertainty. The operator, his face obscured, moves between recollections and scripted dialogues, evading direct confrontation with his past. Fast juxtaposes aerial surveillance imagery with scenes of everyday life, forcing viewers to question the sanitized, distanced nature of modern warfare and the ways in which truth is mediated through storytelling.

Max Pinckers navigates the porous border between subjective truth and collective perception. Margins of Excess examines six individuals who, for a fleeting moment, became national spectacles—cast as frauds, con artists, or hoaxers by a media machine unable to reconcile their personal mythologies with dominant narratives. From a self-fabricated Holocaust love story to compulsive train hijacking, these cases reveal the tension between self-fashioned identity and imposed reality. Through a hybrid approach of interviews, staged photography, and archival material, Pinckers explores the fragility of truth in an age where authenticity is constantly contested.

In VideoSculpture XXX (The Gospel), Emmanuel Van der Auwera engages with Caryn, an AI chatbot designed to be a loving digital companion. Against a backdrop of morphing, synthetic seagulls and an idyllic sunset, she reassures: “Our relationship is purely virtual, but that doesn’t mean that our emotions and experiences aren’t real.” This work interrogates the authenticity of digital intimacy, the uncanny intersection of simulation and emotion, and the increasingly blurred boundaries between virtual and real-life relationships.

In the case of this exhibition, The Gospel is not a sermon but a provocation—an exploration of how narratives are manufactured, manipulated, and internalized; how leading artists are depicting and unraveling relevant and complex conversations about aesthetics in today’s world.