Aviv
Benn
September 17, 2025
Volume 2
Issue 11
Gideon’s Bakery: What do you like about painting?
Aviv Benn: My first intuitive reaction to the question was "I don't like painting!" haha. It is hard to describe my relationship with painting. I suppose it is the love of my life and the bane of my existence. As a viewer what I like about painting is the immediacy of seeing a great painting across the room and getting hypnotized by it, the allure of it; the attractiveness of the surface, being surprised by a fresh and even odd painterly resolution. Nothing is better than seeing a really great and bizarre painting. As a painter, for me, it is somewhat a compulsive relationship with the medium. It is very hard for me to achieve a serene energy in the studio when it comes to the act of painting. I am rarely pleased, and I get very obsessed and endlessly try to push things forward and I rework old paintings, sometimes more than once. It is a sisyphean battle up the mountain; finding your place in the history of painting, being better than the last day and making work that I would find compelling and exciting.
GB: When you describe painting as both a love affair and a Sisyphean struggle, do you think the friction — that relentless reworking and restlessness — is what keeps the work alive, or is there a point where the pursuit of resolution risks dulling the strangeness that first drew you in?
AB: That's the age-old question, no? What's more exciting; the immediacy of love at first sight, that strike of lightning of attraction, or working daily on your relationship and enjoying the depth and resilience of something you spent time building? I think you can look at someone and remember that moment that made you smitten even after years of working on that love together, and that time spent that wasn't always sexy and new and exciting, but the growth and hardship at times is what makes things feel alive. That's how I feel about painting; I think after decades of work, something comes together and through the relentless chiseling, this lightness and this flow and energy appears. I remember seeing the Mark Rothko retrospective at the Louis Vuitton Foundation, and you can see throughout his trajectory how he is carving away through style and expression, until he finds this succinct and gorgeous place, and when we think of a Rothko that's what we think of, not the years of searching and tedious efforts, but this pure thing that was always at the middle of it. I felt the same way when I saw the Philip Guston retrospective at the Tate Modern, and I could probably name 30 more artists who made this journey and found the answer after years of perhaps sometimes not sexy or exciting, but honest and steadfast attempts. So I don't feel the relentlessness is in contrast to what drew me in; it is the love affair that makes the daily work worthwhile, and it's the never-ending pursuit that keeps what drew me in alive.
GB: When you look back at a painting after some time has passed, do you still feel that first spark that drew you to make it, or does the connection change as you grow alongside the work?
AB: That’s such a great question, and one I think about almost every day in the studio. One of the biggest tensions in my process is knowing when my relentless search is productive — when being hard on myself is actually helping me build toward something — and when it’s tipping into being destructive, when I might end up destroying a painting that did nothing wrong. When I look back at older work, I can definitely be too harsh on it. Lately, though, I’ve been making a point to notice and appreciate the moments that sparked the work in the first place. Sometimes I’ll bring those moments forward into a future body of work, or simply appreciate them for what they were at the time. Even when I rework a painting from a year ago, I try to remind myself which parts are the building blocks — the scaffolding — that can support the next stage of the painting or even a whole series. I think what I’m trying to learn over time is to let the work be itself, leave it alone, and let it do its thing. The connection definitely changes as I grow — sometimes I’ll really dislike something I did a few years ago — but then I have to ask myself why. Is it just impatience and unease, or is there a way to make the work more complex and unpredictable in a constructive way? So the question is never fully answered — it just keeps shifting, the same way the work does.
Aviv Benn is a London-based artist.
She completed her MFA in Painting and Drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2018, and her BFA at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem in 2013.
Benn exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions and art fairs in the US, Europe and Tel-Aviv, such as Pi Artworks (London), Rhona Hoffman (Chicago), SECRIST | BEACH (Chicago) Untitled Art Fair (Miami), Future Fair (New-York) and more. She participated in artist residencies including Affect in Berlin (2014), Pilotenkueche, Spinnerei, Leipzig (2015), the Vermont Studio Center (2019), PADA Studios, Portugal (2023), and East London Printmakers Artist Residency (2025).
She received the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant in 2021, Rabinovich Foundation Grant in 2015 and 2019, and the Graduate Dean Professional Development Award from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2017 and 2018.
Oil on canvas, 86x86 cm 34x34 inches
Oil on canvas, 86x86 cm, 34x34 inches
Oil on canvas, 96x110 cm, 38x44 inches