Keren Cytter creates films, video installations, and drawings that represent social realities through experimental modes of storytelling. Characterised by a non-linear, cyclical logic Cytter’s films consist of multiple layers of images; conversation; monologue, and narration systematically composed to undermine linguistic conventions and traditional interpretation schemata. Recalling amateur home movies and video diaries, these montages of impressions, memories, and imaginings are poetic and self-referential in composition. The artist creates intensified scenes drawn from everyday life in which the overwhelmingly artificial nature of the situations portrayed is echoed by the very means of their production.
Read MoreIn 2006 Cytter was awarded the prestigious Bâloise Art Prize at Art Basel for The Victim, a film composed as an infinite loop in which five unnamed protagonists meet over a dinner that culminates in a suicide that repeatedly takes us back to the beginning of the scene. The effect of Cytter’s distinctly analytical approach to filmmaking is the creation of narratives choreographed to expand our understanding of the way in which the strategies and clichés of the media permeate our social reality. In March 2015 Cytter held her first large scale survey of work in the USA at MCA Chicago.
Keren Cytter was born in 1977 in Tel Aviv, Israel. Selected solo exhibitions of Cytter’s work include: The Mirror of Simple Souls, SCHLOSS, Oslo (2017); Ocean, Pilar Corrias, London (2016); Panoramas, Mathew Gallery, New York (2016); Keren Cytter Selection, Künstlerhaus Halle für Kunst & Medien, Graz (2016); Keren Cytter, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2015), Here and There, Noga Gallery, Tel Aviv (2015), Rose Garden, Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, Indianapolis (2015), Keren Cytter, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2014); Video Art Manual, State of Concept, Athens (2014); Keren Cytter, Galerie Nagel Draxler, Cologne (2014); Keren Cytter: HOME, Zach Feuer, New York (2014); Keren Cytter: MOP VENGEANCE, Pilar Corrais, London (2013); Tutorial, Deweer Gallery, Otegem (2013); Show Real Drama, Tate Modern Oil Tanks, London (2012); Avalanche, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2011); Project Series: Keren Cytter, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2010); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2010); X Initiative, New York (2009); CCA Center for Contemporary Art, Kitakyushu (2009); Centro Huarte de Arte Contemporáneo, Huarte (2008); Lüttgenmeijer, Berlin (2008); Stuk Kunstcentrum, Leuven (2007); MUMOK, Vienna (2007). Recent group exhibitions include: In Relation to a Spectator, Kestner Gessellschaft, Hanover (2017); Nothing But Longing, Void Gallery, Derry, Northern Ireland (2017); House of Commons, Portikus, Frankfrut (2016); Political Populism, Kunsthalle Wien (2015), Affects, Kunstpalis, Erlangen (2014); Der Stachel des Skorpions (The Sting of the Scorpion), Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, Institute Mathildenhoehe, Darmstadt (2014); High Performance. The JULIA STOSCHEK COLLECTION as guest at the ZKM. Time-based Media Art since 1996, Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe (2014); Where are we Now?, 5th Marrakech Biennale, Marrakech (2014); Annals of the Twenty-Ninth Century, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge (2014); Skeptical Thoughts on Love, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Stuttgart (2014); Taming the Narrative, Basis, Frankfurt am Main (2013); Liberi Tutti, Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Teatro Arsenale, Milan (2013); Leisure, Discipline and Punishment, 6th Biennial of Moving Image, Mechelen (2013); Jew York, Zach Feuer, New York (2013); On Apology, CCA Wattis, San Francisco (2012); Whistable Biennale (2012); FAX, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City (2012); The Plot, Power Plant, Toronto (2011); Expanded Cinema, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow (2011); Fare Mondi: 53rd International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia (2009); The Generational: Younger than Jesus, New Museum, New York (2009); Television Delivers People, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2008); Manifesta 7, Trentino (2008); and Yokohama Triennial, Yokahama (2008).
Cytter is also the author of three novels: The Man Who Climbed Up the Stairs of Life and Found Out They Were Cinema Seats (Lukas and Sternberg, New York/Berlin, 2005); The seven most exciting hours of Mr. Trier’s life in twenty-four chapters (Witte de With and Sternberg, Rotterdam/Berlin, 2008), and The Amazing True Story of Moshe Klinberg – A Media Star (onestar, Paris, 2009).
Keren Cytter lives and works in New York.
Text courtesy Pilar Corrias.