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

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

Aviv Benn has lately joined Rise Art, bringing her expressionistic will work to the platform. Her paintings are a visible universe starring symbolic archetypes and fantastical sorts that pop up, reappear, and mix to formulate the dreamlike environment they inhabit. By repeating the very same imagery above many canvases, she informs a narrative that stretches far beyond the boundaries of a singular painting. Weaving new interactions alongside one another, she constructs a vivid, interconnecting fantasy throughout her is effective.

Aviv in her studio with a lot of items from her fantastical dreamlike world (Photo: Omer Gaash)

 

How would you explain the art you create?

Paintings, typically oil on canvas.

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

 

Inform us a little bit about the inspiration powering your follow

Each time persons inquire me the problem every painter dreads, “So.. what is your perform about?” or “Can you tell me about what you paint?” I jokingly say “How significantly the world sucks.” I guess it is my way of declaring how I deal with existential dread, the uncertainty of currently being, and this current period and its several upheavals. That is the inspiration behind my work in phrases of subject make a difference. As a painter, however, I try out to force factors forward from a follow/medium-primarily based point of view, to make far more surprising do the job, and to make every piece a little much better than the previous. Which is what evokes me and retains me fast paced in the studio.

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

 

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

The themes in my function acquire several years to check out, and each human body of function reveals yet another side of a environment I am making bit by bit. Just about every sequence explores a established of symbols, creatures, and painterly environments that notify a cohesive nevertheless abstract tale. The imagery released in each individual sequence is intuitive and operates as a distorted mirror of our globe. Painting is a medium that defies terms (just request painters how substantially they dislike crafting those people artist statements, hehe). There is some thing elusive about it, like seeking to keep in mind a dream upon waking up. So likewise I struggle to make clear the ideas powering my work, they are manifestations of inner thoughts and ideas that float in my head for a long time, setting up up and then turning into pictures on the canvas.

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

 

How has your exercise developed in recent yrs?

I utilised to make work incredibly swiftly and very compulsively and impatiently. I would also depend a good deal on humour and even integrate textual content in my operate. Given that my operate offers with existential themes, I felt I had to inject humour to make my do the job easier to course of action and interact with. Gradually I moved absent from the text and cartoony work, and in the final 18 months or so, considering the fact that moving to London, I have experimented with to shell out far more time with every single piece, make my perform more sophisticated, and enable go of working with humour as a defence system (in my function anyhow ha!).

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

 

What’s an regular day like in your studio?

I like trying to keep a plan when it comes to owning a studio follow, which can help me to bring framework to the chaos that is art-making. So I commonly arrive in the early morning and get the job done right until the early night, with just one quick break for lunch. I watch my studio as a silent and tranquil workspace, wherever I can aim and paint not like other artists, I really don’t truly “hang” in my studio, I rarely invite good friends over, and I really don’t nap or read through in the studio. For me, it is strictly a room to make work.

Aviv’s workstation in her studio

 

How do you go about earning each and every work?

I are likely to do the job intuitively, and hardly ever sketch prior to making a new painting. I ordinarily get started each and every piece with a vibrant summary floor and react to the designs and gestures that are “established” on the canvas. Then I slowly outline the photographs throughout the portray procedure and respond to the planet that is made in front of me on the canvas, right until I come to a decision the piece is finished. The symbols and imagery that notify my paintings also establish intuitively, and their reappearance in many canvases creates a narrative that stretches about a sequence of performs.

Sights of Nocturnal Melt away, 2022, oil, oil pastels on canvas, 130 x 130cm

 

What/Who are your critical influences?

As a nerdy painter, I am truly impressed by the get the job done of other painters, specifically gutsy painters who push the boundaries of the medium and produce daring, thoughtful, and unsettling get the job done. I really feel that painting, more than any other medium, actually follows the idea of “standing on the shoulders of giants”, and each and every painting is developed in mild of or inspite of the prosperous heritage of painting. In my individual exercise, if I look for inspiration, or if I get trapped trying to resolve a portray, I obtain the solutions in the function of painters I respect, or stop by a collection in a museum I enjoy, and this commonly does the trick. Yet another major affect is looking at poetry. I come from a family of writers and my grandfather was an established poet, who would often inspire me to examine and analyse poems developing up. A lot of of my titles are impressed by poems and I see them as a different “key” to reading through my paintings. Ahead of beginning a new sequence I would read through poetry that I come to feel will tell the work in a way I are unable to seriously describe, but feels right. At the time a piece is completed I will check out the identical poems yet again, in order to title the operate, which in a way is “completing” the course of action of producing.

The Day Empties Its Illustrations or photos, 2021, oil, oil pastels, spray paint on canvas, 127 x 127cm

 

Who are some Increase Art artists with work you are savoring at the moment?

I truly like Sabrina Shah’s work, her expressive and chaotic paintings are persuasive and neat in a punk type of way, I also love Olga Shcheblykina textured, darkish, and humorist creations, and Christine Lyon’s vivid, intricate and intricate bodily operate.

Aviv’s works displayed in her studio (@tooth_dream)

 

Are you at present working on any fascinating new initiatives?

I am at present in the procedure of finalising a new physique of operate and I hope I could expose additional details shortly, keep tuned!

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