Keren Cytter: Video Art Manual

Video Art Manual is a major survey exhibition of works by Israeli-born artist Keren Cytter, whose experimental videos mix disjointed cinematic, literary, and theatrical conventions to illuminate the interpersonal and the private. A playful use of timing, editing, and camera angles are signature aspects of Cytter’s work. Video Art Manual includes 10 video works produced over the past five years, along with related drawings, texts, and photographs. Featuring the U.S. premiere of a new video, Vengeance (working title), the exhibition marks Cytter’s debut in Houston and her first major institutional survey in the United States. The exhibition features 7 video works including Video Art Manual (2011), Four Seasons (2009), and the premiere of Vengeance (working title) (2012), along with text pieces, artist’s books, drawings, and photographs. Video Art Manual, from which the exhibition takes its title, is ostensibly about the history and development of video art. The 14 minute HD film features Cytter’s typical mode of a fractured narrative by splicing original scripted footage with appropriated and manipulated clips from the internet and cable news networks.

About Keren Cytter

In addition to creating films and works on paper, Keren Cytter has authored several novels, plays, and an opera libretto. She is the co-founder of D.I.E. NOW (Dance International Europe Now), a dance and theater company. Cytter was born in Tel Aviv in 1977. She studied at The Avni Institute in Tel Aviv and received her degree from de Ateliers in Amsterdam. Cytter’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Tate Modern, London; Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin and Kunsthalle Zürich. Her work was included in the 53rd Venice Biennial; Found in Translation, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; 8th Gwangju Biennale; Manifesta 7, Trentino; and Talking Pictures, K21 Kunstammlung Nordhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf. Cytter was the recipient of the 2006 Baloise Art Prize, Art Basel, Switzerland, the Absolut Art Award in 2009, and shortlisted for the Victor Pinchuk Foundation’s 2010 Future Generation Art Prize. Cytter currently lives and works in New York City.