Oliver Ressler will present an opus that deals with the implications of the global financial and economic crisis and the main shortcomings of the parliamentary democracy model that became apparent. Ressler’s films and installations often start from conversational situations in which the artist creates a platform for the problems of his protagonists. A good example is the eight-channel video installation What Is Democracy? (2009), in which conversations with activists become, in fact, a general analysis of the difficult political crisis that the model of Western democracy faced. This crisis is manifested in the fact that elections in parliamentary democracies are increasingly becoming meaningless rituals, while specific decisions are made outside of public discussions. Ressler’s wall text Elections are a Con (2011) warns us of this danger, while the wall text Too Big to Fail (2011) and the films The Bull Laid Beard (2012, co-director Zanny Begg) and Robbery (2012) explore how to cope with financial and economic crisis, how banks were saved and what are the social consequences of their rescue.

Oliver Ressler (1970, Vienna) is an artist and filmmaker who produces installations, projects in public space, and films on issues such as economics, democracy, migration, the climate crisis, forms of resistance and social alternatives.
Ressler has had solo exhibitions at Berkeley Art Museum, USA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade; Centro Cultural Conde Duque, Madrid; Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum, Egypt; The Cube Project Space, Taipei; Kunsthaus Graz, Graz and comprehensive solo exhibitions at Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdansk; Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz; Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo – CAAC, Seville; SALT Galata, Istanbul. Ressler has participated in more than 400 group exhibitions, including Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven; MASSMoCA, North Adams, USA; Centre Pompidou, Paris; the biennials in Prague (2005), Seville (2006), Moscow (2007), Taipei (2008), Lyon (2009), Gyumri (2012), Venice (2013), Athens (2013). In 2002, Ressler won the first prize at the International Media Art Award of the ZKM in Karlsruhe and he is the first prize winner of the newly established Prix Thun for Art and Ethics Award in 2016.