Yes to Burning Eyes

Guy Ben-Ari

Friday, January 6th, 2012 - Sunday, January 29th, 2012

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Guy Ben-Ari, Yes to Burning Eyes Guy Ben-Ari is invested in the act of painting in relation to the mechanism of language. As Lacan’s “the word kills the thing” suggests, giving an object a name fixes its meaning. In the same way, giving a metaphor a literal illustrative interpretation kills the metaphor, thus making it dysfunctional. His recent work uses painting as a framework to study elements of post-structuralism and psychoanalytic theory. Much of Ben-Ari’s work originates in jokes or illustrations of related concepts and situations, as he attempts to employ a literal strategy in an image, without collapsing into a mere illustration. This exhibition is supported by Artis - Contemporary Israeli Art Fund.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Guy Ben-Ari (born 1984 in Israel) lives and works in New York City. He received his MFA from Columbia University’s School of the Arts in 2011, and his BFA (with honors) from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem in 2009. While in Bezalel, he received the Loren and Mitchell Persser Award for Excellence in Painting and was selected for the Exchange Program for Merit Students to study painting at the Slade School of Fine Arts, UCL, London in 2008. Ben-Ari’s work has been recently shown in New York City at Thierry Goldberg Projects, 6-8 Months Project Space, the Neiman Gallery and the Fisher Landau Center for Art. Ben-Ari’s upcoming solo show in Hamidrasha Gallery, Tel Aviv opens March 2012.