Guy Ben Ner: Videos

Galerie Nathalie Obadia presents for the first time in France a set of video-installations by Israeli artist Guy Ben-Ner.
Born in 1969, Guy Ben-Ner represented the Israeli Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005.
Guy Ben-Ner's videos are anti-movies, performances that refer to cinema and the practice of video in contemporary art.
Unlike cinema, which creates a parallel universe, Guy Ben-Ner's videos are shot inside his apartment. Director and scriptwriter, he stages himself with his own children, Elia and Amir.

Wild boy, 17 mn, 2005, is the story of Amir's education process under the direction of the artist himself.
The work is filmed in their kitchen, transformed for the occasion into a parody of an outdoor setting where parakeets, rabbits and other rodents roam freely, adding a touch of humor and poetry to this "home-made ikea" video.

The cinematographic references are implicit: the Wild Child (1970) by Truffaut (allusion to Truffaut himself educating the child actor Jean-Pierre Léaud...)

Parable of education, allegory of the loneliness of exile or confinement, the work of Guy Ben-Ner combines with subtlety the epic of cinema (Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton ...), fiction, documentary and burlesque.

Two other videos will also be exhibited:

House Hold, 2001
22 : 35 min, sound
with : Elia, Guy, Nava and Amir Ben-Ner

Elia - a Story of an Ostrich Chick, 2003
22 : 30 min, sound
with : Elia, Guy, Nava and Amir Ben-Ner