The archetypal family man drives his big American car once more around the block to avoid coming home to another pot roast and two screaming kids. Guy Ben-Ner is another kind of family guy altogether: a stay-at-home dad who has made his two kids into the ultimate artistic constraint.

The Brooklyn-based Ben-Ner, who represents Israel at the 51st Venice Biennale, has filled the Israeli pavilion with his “Treehouse Kit,” a branching wooden tree that converts into a sleeping structure. It comes with an instructional video that features the artist as a bearded tinkerer, like Robinson Crusoe stranded in the white cube. He soon learns how to make things from his prefab tree: a chair, a table, a bed.

“It starts up as a nice object, as a tree,” the artist, 36, explained by telephone from Venice, “and it ends up as the most conventional thing: it doesn’t pay off. It’s about how can you go wrong with such an object.” It’s also about the isolated individual within the family structure, utopian longing, the circularity of human ingenuity, and those damnable Ikea assembly instructions.

The hand-made fantasy island life mirrors that of the artist’s, sent off to Venice all by himself to make the family proud. The United States is represented at the Biennale by veteran L.A. painter Ed Ruscha. But Mr. Ben-Ner, officially Israel’s artist, stands for the do-it-yourself, offhandedly erudite spirit of avant-garde New York, where Mr. Ben-Ner has lived since 2001 with his wife and two children.

The Venice piece is also the artist’s first video in five years to not feature his children.

When Mr. Ben-Ner’s daughter, Elia, was born 11 years ago, he decided to work at home, while his wife continued to work full time. Soon, that effort became his subject. “Home is for me fertile,” said Mr. Ben-Ner. “A lot of ideas come from being with the kids and playing with them.” His cheaply shot, sometimes grainy videos look homemade, and often take well-known narratives as departure points.

“Moby Dick” (2000) is an abridged version of Melville, shot primarily in the kitchen, with the artist and Elia, then 6, playing all the roles – Ishmael, Queequeg, Ahab – wearing striped sailor shirts. Funny effects abound: They eat at the kitchen table and the camera angle tilts to mimic the tossing ship; Elia repeatedly emerges from her sleeping quarters – the refrigerator – to show the passing of days. “Moby Dick” is currently at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens, as part of its show “Greater New York,” and people often gather and giggle in front of it.

“The unique aspect of his work is the way he’s addressing domestic settings and the way he’s been able to seamlessly fuse studio and home,” said Matt Distel, associate curator at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, where Mr. Ben-Ner will have a solo show this fall. “He’s one of a very few people thinking about video in expansive ways.” MoMA has acquired “Moby Dick.” According to Mr. Ben-Ner’s New York gallerist, Magda Sawon of Post masters, his videos usually sell for around $12,000 in editions of six, while full installations are more expensive.

Mr. Ben-Ner received his M.F.A. from Columbia after moving to New York and is intimate with the work of pioneering video artists such as Bruce Nauman and Dennis Oppenheim. But he is equally drawn to slapstick and vaudeville. “Moby Dick” entertains first and engages the history of film second. The father-daughter slapstick antics are a tip of the hat to Buster Keaton and his father, who used to perform together, dressed alike. “In vaudeville, there’s no space between family and home,” he said. “Also, there’s the cheapness of silent movies; it’s like a catalogue of inventions.”

Many of Mr. Ben-Ner’s own inventions come from trying to coax rather than cajole his children into the lime light. In “Elia (a story of an ostrich chick)” (2003), also at P.S. 1 until September 26, the entire family dons homemade ostrich suits and ventures into the wild (actually, Riverside Park). As in a nature video, a soft-spoken, vaguely British narrator describes the habits of the ostrich: the “preening father” and his mating dance, the “young ones [who] learn from imitation.”

Their costumes, including clumsy rubber ostrich feet, actually face backward. The children appear to run backward with unusual proficiency. Mr. Ben-Ner filmed them walking normally, then reversed the tape. “In ostrich families, the family goes after the male, but my son would never follow me, and it was a way to get him to be obedient,” Mr. Ben-Ner said. “If you broaden it, you always direct your kids according to your fantasies.”

NEW YORK ‘ S FINEST

The Venice Biennale, which officially opened on Sunday, is the world’s oldest biennial exhibition of art. This year’s co-directors Maria de Corral and Rosa Martinez brought together a selection of 91 international artists in two group exhibitions. Funny thing about these international artists: 15 live in New York. In addition, 31 national pavilions feature artists selected by their home countries. New York residents Guy Ben-Ner, Cai Quo-Qiang, Jonas Mekas, and Antonio Muntadas produced installations on behalf of Israel, China, Lithuania, and Spain, respectively. Local Barbara Kruger won the Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement. Here is a list of their New York neighbors who are showing in Venice as part of the group shows.

Andrea Blum
Born in New York City, 1950
Lives and works in New York City

Dan Graham
Born in Urbana, Ill., 1942
Lives and works in New York City

Jenny Holzer
Born in Gallipolis, Ohio, 1950
Lives and works in New York City

Barbara Kruger
Born in Newark, N.J., 1945
Lives and works in Los Angeles and in New York City

Gabriel Orozco
Born in Jalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, 1962
Lives and works in Mexico City, New York City, and Paris

Juan Usle
Born in Santander, Spain, 1954
Lives and works in Santander, Spain and New York City

Ghada Amer
Born in Cairo, Egypt, 1963
Lives and works in Paris and New York City

Louise Bourgeois
Born in Paris, France, 1911
Lives and works in New York City

Stephen Dean
Born in Paris, France, 1968
Lives and works in New York City and Paris

Emily Jacir
Born in Bethlehem, Israel, 1970
Lives and works in Ramallah, Israel and New York City

Bruna Esposito
Born in Rome, Italy, 1960
Lives and works in Rome and New York City

Kimsooja
Born in Taegu, Korea, 1957
Lives and works in New York City

Shazia Sikander
Born in Lahore, Pakistan, 1969
Lives and works in New York City

Mariko Mori
Born in Tokyo, Japan, 1967
Lives and works in New York City and Tokyo

Valeska Soares
Born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 1957
Lives and works in Brooklyn