17 min
Wild Boy is the story of the education of Amir, the artist’s son. Ben-Ner plays the educator’s part, trying to domesticate the child. Using the metaphor of the wild child is Ben-Ner’s homage to this recurring theme in literature and cinema: from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ « Tarzan » to Truffaut’s « L’enfant sauvage », and Rudyard Kipling’s « Jungle book ». The video is an attempt at capturing this decisive moment when the child lets go of its wilderness to become « civilized », and raises the nature/culture dichotomy, dear to the Enlightenment philosophers.
In his films, Guy Ben-Ner plays with the history of cinema, referring to the experimental origins of silent film, to comic figures such as Keaton and Chaplin, and to Truffaut’s French New Wave. Since 1996, the artist has been concentrating on his family members and stages them with burlesque humor. Just as Buster Keaton, he is at once actor-director, his wife and children the only other actors, and his apartment the improvised set: he uses available furniture and objects, creates an artificial island in his kitchen and constructs a tree house for Treehouse Kit (2005), a work in which the sculpture takes part in the video installation. The theatrical aspect of the set relates to the playful situations. Each one of Ben-Ner’s films participates, as an episode, to a collection of fables about human nature, reenacting stereotypical motifs found in literature and cinema, such as the desert island (“Berkeleys Island” 1999) or “Moby Dick” (2000). Guy Ben-Ner was born in 1969, Ramat Gan, Israel. He lives and works in Tel Aviv.
“Untitled” is inspired by the movie “Opening Night” by John Cassavetes with Gena Rowlands playing the role of a fallen woman, anguished by her distressed life...
In his composition, Chocolate Bars, Eggs, Milk, Lassry’s subjects are mirrored in their surroundings (both figuratively, through the chocolate colored backdrop and the brown frame; and literally, in the milky white, polished surface of the table), as the artist plays with color, shape, and the conventions of representational art both within and outside of the photographic tradition...
Why artists fear online safety laws will chill freedom of expression Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search Technology comment Why artists fear online safety laws will chill freedom of expression Free expression groups and creatives believe the price of “safety” on the internet may be the exclusion of marginalised artists and groups, and an end to online privacy for all Emma Shapiro 15 December 2023 Share Lawmakers want the ability to search encrypted messages for child sexual abuse material © terovesalainen The internet is on the brink of another revolution, but not because of starry-eyed startups or out-of-touch tech executives...
AI Artwork Projected on Historic Gaudí House Draws Nearly 100K People Skip to content Sofia Crespo, "Structures of Being" (2024), projection mapping at Casa Batlló (photo by Claudia Maurino, courtesy Casa Batlló) BARCELONA — Architect-designer Antoni Gaudí, legend of Catalan Modernisme, is often quoted as having said, “Nothing is invented, for it’s written in nature first.” Whether or not that’s apocryphal, his legacy suggested something holier than human at work...
In New York City’s Chinatown, subject Suat Ling Chua’s morning exercise is to practice the hula hoop...
For Immersion , Harun Farocki went to visit a research centre near Seattle specialized in the development of virtual realities and computer simulations...
The Nightwatch , which is an ironic reference to the celebrated painting by Rembrandt, follows the course of a fox wandering among the celebrated collections of the National Portrait Gallery in London...
Parrot Drawings or Paintings look like children’s drawings and seem quite innocent...
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