Guy Ben-Ner

Born 1969, holds a master’s degree from Columbia University New York and a bachelor’s degree from the Faculty of Arts – HaMidrasha, Beit Berl.

One of the first and foremost leading video artists in Israeli art. Beginning in the 1990s and for over twenty years he has created a series of video works that question the kind of work that is required to put up a video work, the means needed for it, the site where it can be held and what characters can populate it, the types of physical activities it is capable of containing and the underlying thought processes.

Many of Ben-Ner’s works place the artist within his household and examine the artist’s family life and family member’s art life (“Karaoke”, “Untitled (rolling pin)”). Others refer to cultural myths (“Berkeley Island”, “Moby Dick”) while stretching cultural work to the edge of loneliness or savagery. These are clever, brilliant, funny, seemingly simple works – most of them rely on one gesture, concentrated and compressed, performed to perfection. They are saturated with the history of cinema (for example in “Wild Child”, or in his latest work for the time being, “Escape Artists”), but do not respond to the cinematic spectacle. They position video as an intimate and gothic medium centered on a body and the space around it and its movement is self-reflection, communal and political.

His works have been exhibited at the MoMA, the Guggenheim Museum, the Munster Sculpture Project and at Manifesta, among others. In 2004 he represented Israel at the Venice Art Biennale. His works are in the collections of the Israel Museum and in major museums around the world.