Oliver Ressler's 'Confronting Comfort’s Continent' at La Fabbrica del Cioccolato

Oliver Ressler's solo exhibition 'Confronting Comfort’s Continent' at La Fabbrica del Cioccolato in Torre-Blenio, Switzerland, runs until September 14, 2016. The show transforms the former chocolate factory into a site for critical reflection on social and economic models beyond neoliberal capitalism. Central works include the three-channel video installation 'Occupy, Resist, Produce' (2014-2015), depicting worker-run factories in Europe, and 'Take The Square' (2012), focused on direct democracy movements in Athens, Madrid, and New York. Ressler's film 'Leave it in the Ground' (2013) addresses offshore oil drilling in Norway and climate change, while 'Emergency Turned Upside-Down' (2016) responds to the 2015 European migration crisis, using abstract animation to avoid co-opted imagery. The exhibition title modifies the narrative of the latter film, co-written with Matthew Hyland, critiquing Europe's willful ignorance of crises. Ressler views his art as inseparable from political activism, aiming to reach broad audiences without requiring complex decoding.