Sommer Salon

Guy Ben Ner, one of Israel’s foremost video artists, makes low-tech films that star his family in absurdist settings carved out of their everyday surroundings. His videos tell of the revolt of the man who is an artist and at the same time who reluctantly acquiesces to his role as father and male homemaker. Many of his works are inspired of screenplays for films, folk tales and novels. Analyzing these literary and cinematographic passages allows him to exploit the conventions of film narrative: how to tell a story, captivate an audience through a tale, sustain a degree of tension and entertainment and so on. At the same time, he corrupts the magic of fiction by openly showing us the entrails of everything he records, without worrying about revealing the tricks of the trade a large part of his filmic oeuvre features a conglomeration of cinematic and literary references which the artist quotes, adapts or interprets. Ben-Ner self-referentially links the great themes and their literary, cinematic and artistic realization, making them productive for the viewers of his works.