Interview with Aviv Benn: A dreamlike world that goes beyond the canvas

Interview with Aviv Benn: A dreamlike world that goes beyond the canvas

Aviv Benn has recently joined Increase Art, bringing her expressionistic operates to the system. Her paintings are a visible universe starring symbolic archetypes and fantastical forms that pop up, reappear, and merge to formulate the dreamlike environment they inhabit. By repeating the same imagery in excess of many canvases, she informs a narrative that stretches significantly past the boundaries of a singular portray. Weaving new interactions with each other, she constructs a vivid, interconnecting myth all over her is effective.

Aviv in her studio with quite a few parts from her fantastical dreamlike environment (Photo: Omer Gaash)

 

How would you describe the artwork you make?

Paintings, primarily oil on canvas.

Cosmos Inhaler, 2021, oil, spray paint, linocut and wax medium on canvas, 70 x 60cm

 

Notify us a little bit about the inspiration behind your observe

Whenever men and women inquire me the question every single painter dreads, “So.. what’s your perform about?” or “Can you inform me about what you paint?” I jokingly say “How substantially the entire world sucks.” I guess it is my way of declaring how I offer with existential dread, the uncertainty of remaining, and this present period and its several upheavals. That is the inspiration guiding my do the job in phrases of subject matter subject. As a painter, even though, I test to drive items forward from a practice/medium-based mostly standpoint, to make additional stunning operate, and to make every single piece a minimal far better than the final. That is what conjures up me and retains me occupied in the studio.

Not Haste Into A Landscape, 2021, oil, spray paint, oil pastels on canvas, 65 x 65cm

 

How do you occur up with the concepts for your artworks?

The themes in my get the job done acquire decades to take a look at, and each individual system of function reveals yet another facet of a environment I am developing bit by bit. Every single series explores a established of symbols, creatures, and painterly environments that explain to a cohesive yet summary story. The imagery launched in each and every series is intuitive and operates as a distorted mirror of our world. Painting is a medium that defies words (just talk to painters how significantly they hate creating all those artist statements, hehe). There is one thing elusive about it, like attempting to don’t forget a desire upon waking up. So similarly I struggle to make clear the tips driving my perform, they are manifestations of feelings and thoughts that float in my head for a prolonged time, constructing up and then getting pictures on the canvas.

The Horror of Our Graphic Will Unravel, 2022, oil on canvas, 75 x 75cm

 

How has your exercise advanced in new yrs?

I utilised to make perform very speedily and very compulsively and impatiently. I would also rely a ton on humour and even incorporate textual content in my get the job done. Considering the fact that my function bargains with existential themes, I felt I had to inject humour to make my operate simpler to process and interact with. Slowly and gradually I moved absent from the textual content and cartoony function, and in the very last 18 months or so, given that going to London, I have tried out to devote more time with just about every piece, make my get the job done much more sophisticated, and permit go of making use of humour as a defence system (in my work anyhow ha!).

Age of Glass, 2021, Oil, oil pastels on canvas, 75 x 75cm

 

What is an average working day like in your studio?

I like preserving a regimen when it comes to possessing a studio follow, which helps me to deliver construction to the chaos that is artwork-creating. So I normally arrive in the morning and do the job right up until the early night, with a single rapid crack for lunch. I view my studio as a tranquil and peaceful workspace, the place I can emphasis and paint as opposed to other artists, I really do not definitely “hang” in my studio, I almost never invite buddies over, and I do not nap or go through in the studio. For me, it is strictly a space to make operate.

Aviv’s workstation in her studio

 

How do you go about earning each perform?

I are inclined to perform intuitively, and almost never sketch prior to building a new painting. I commonly commence every piece with a colourful summary floor and react to the shapes and gestures that are “established” on the canvas. Then I little by little determine the illustrations or photos throughout the painting method and respond to the environment that is produced in front of me on the canvas, until I choose the piece is finished. The symbols and imagery that tell my paintings also acquire intuitively, and their reappearance in several canvases makes a narrative that stretches in excess of a sequence of functions.

Sights of Nocturnal Burn off, 2022, oil, oil pastels on canvas, 130 x 130cm

 

What/Who are your important influences?

As a nerdy painter, I am definitely motivated by the function of other painters, specially gutsy painters who drive the boundaries of the medium and build daring, considerate, and unsettling work. I really feel that portray, far more than any other medium, certainly follows the idea of “standing on the shoulders of giants”, and each painting is created in light-weight of or even with the prosperous record of painting. In my own practice, if I appear for inspiration, or if I get stuck hoping to solve a portray, I locate the answers within just the operate of painters I appreciate, or check out a selection in a museum I really like, and this generally does the trick. An additional main impact is examining poetry. I appear from a relatives of writers and my grandfather was an founded poet, who would often inspire me to go through and analyse poems expanding up. Several of my titles are motivated by poems and I see them as another “key” to reading my paintings. In advance of commencing a new collection I would read poetry that I come to feel will tell the do the job in a way I cannot definitely explain, but feels right. When a piece is finished I will visit the identical poems once again, in buy to title the do the job, which in a way is “completing” the method of building.

The Working day Empties Its Visuals, 2021, oil, oil pastels, spray paint on canvas, 127 x 127cm

 

Who are some Increase Art artists with operate you’re experiencing at the moment?

I truly like Sabrina Shah’s get the job done, her expressive and chaotic paintings are persuasive and cool in a punk sort of way, I also love Olga Shcheblykina textured, dim, and humorist creations, and Christine Lyon’s vivid, advanced and intricate bodily perform.

Aviv’s is effective exhibited in her studio (@enamel_aspiration)

 

Are you at the moment doing work on any interesting new projects?

I am at this time in the approach of finalising a new entire body of function and I hope I could reveal much more specifics shortly, continue to be tuned!