Guy Ben-Ner

Organizaciones con obra

Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M)

Descripción del Artista

Guy Ben-Ner, (born January 4, 1969, Ramat Gan, Israel), Israeli video artist who featured himself and his family as actors in his humorous and profound productions. His story lines made pointed reference to well-known works of literature, philosophy, art, and cinema. Ben-Ner studied at Hamidrasha Art School, Beit Berl College (B.Ed., 1997), in Ramat HaSharon, Israel, and later at Columbia University (M.F.A., 2003) in New York. One of his early works, Berkeley’s Island (1999), dealt with artistic constraints—in terms of setting, artistic material, and funding—and featured Ben-Ner as a lonely castaway stranded on a pile of sand in the middle of his kitchen. Filmed with a relatively inexpensive video camera and within the confines of his home, this low-budget video was a tongue-in-cheek reference to Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe (1719–22). It explored themes prevalent in many of Ben-Ner’s works, such as the longing for adventure, the search for solitude, the need to play, and the way human primal desires are mediated by social structure and mores. The presence of Ben-Ner’s children in the video (and his wife as well in others) allowed him to weave back and forth between reality and fantasy, addressing the tension between family obligations and artistic and personal freedom. As his reputation grew, his works began to explore the idea of autonomy and loss inherent in being an itinerant artist of international acclaim. In 2005 Ben-Ner represented Israel at the Venice Biennale with his video installation Treehouse Kit, which consisted of a prefabricated tree sculpture and an instructional video featuring the artist. In 2007 he completed Stealing Beauty, a mischievous guerrilla video of sorts that he filmed without permission in several IKEA department stores. Using IKEA’s showrooms as if they were the setting for a sitcom, Ben-Ner and his family performed as characters. In this video he amusingly addressed such philosophical ideas as Friedrich Engels’s thesis that the family is a tool to aid in the dissemination of capitalism. In 2009–10 Ben-Ner was the subject of a major survey exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. Ben-Ner’s other works include Moby Dick (2000), Household (2001), Elia—A Story of an Ostrich Chick (2003), Wild Boy (2004), I’d Give It to You If I Could, but I Borrowed It (2006–07), Second Nature (2008), If Only It Was as Easy to Banish Hunger by Rubbing the Belly as It Is to Masturbate (2009), and the “live film” Drop the Monkey (2009), which he made with no external editing, rehearsals, or other conventional elements of film for Performa 2009, the 3rd biennial of visual art performance in New York City. Texto extraído de la Enciclopedia Británica, realizado por Jennifer Louise Breckner.

Exposiciones en las que ha participado como artista

Soundtrack

Colectiva

XX Bienal de Arte Paiz

Colectiva

Tercer espacio: entre tradición y modernidad

Colectiva

4 exposiciones