Ben Cnaan, an Israeli artist renowned for his large-scale, meticulously staged paintings that often reinterpret biblical stories through contemporary Israeli subjects, is currently showcasing a new collection that shifts focus from grand group scenes to more intimate, everyday moments. His latest works, on display at Rothschild Fine Art gallery in Tel Aviv through October 10, reflect a transition toward smaller formats and a focus on fleeting glimpses of daily life.
Cnaan first gained broad recognition in 2017 with the Haim Shiff Prize for Figurative-Realist Art, which led to a solo exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. More recently, in 2021, the Israel Museum exhibited his monumental painting “The Bureaucrat” (2018–2020), a two-by-four-meter canvas featuring nearly 100 carefully directed figures assembled in a field. The painting was accompanied by a text written by acclaimed author David Grossman. Earlier this year, a solo exhibition of his work was held at the Negev Museum of Art in Beersheba. Alongside his artistic practice, Cnaan teaches at both the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design and the University of Haifa. His works are included in public and private collections across Israel and internationally.
In his new series, Cnaan downsizes his canvases—some as small as 23 square centimeters on birch and linen—demonstrating a rigorous precision where each brushstroke shapes delicate expressions. Unlike his earlier staged compositions, these recent paintings emerge from observations during everyday life, moments discovered “on the way to taking my children to school,” as he puts it, capturing scenes with attentive visual listening.
One notable work, “Not the Eggplant’s Problem,” depicts a man watching a watermelon he dropped rupture on the street, alongside a vendor and a woman holding an eggplant. The juxtaposition introduces a wry acknowledgment of humor amidst misfortune, highlighting small yet telling human experiences. Cnaan reflects that following the national trauma of October 7 in Israel, such seemingly minor personal crises take on complex meaning—moments of individual difficulty that contrast with wider collective suffering.
The exhibition’s title, drawn from a lyric in Mashina’s 1990 song “Az Lama Li Politika Achshav” (“So Why Do I Need Politics Now”), resonates with this tension. Cnaan interprets the line as an expression of self-recognition and the painful acknowledgement that, beneath surface illusions, all is not well. He emphasizes that while his work is not broadly political in a left-right ideological sense, the act of choosing how to perceive the world always carries political weight. His paintings explore themes of injustice, alienation, and helplessness without resorting to polemics.
The recent works often employ chiaroscuro effects, with figures illuminated by singular sources of light filtering through windows, shutters, or awnings, set against darker backgrounds. Many scenes shift indoors into spaces like garages, laundromats, or food stalls, where the bulk of the prior large crowd scenes dissolve into smaller groups or solitary individuals. The realism loosens upon close inspection into expressive brushwork, capturing the texture of wet streets, sun-dappled walls, and everyday objects.
Cnaan likens his paintings to cinematic frames distilled into singular moments that encapsulate past, present, and future simultaneously. He cites Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs” as a formative influence, admiring how the unfolding drama occurs within a confined space and eschews traditional narrative exposition. This method allows Cnaan to compress complex stories and psychological nuances into a single image.
Regarding his approach to staging, Cnaan explains that directorial control is nuanced. During “The Bureaucrat,” he guided participants with broad concepts rather than detailed scripts, focusing on spontaneous gestures that convey deeper emotional states such as alienation or instinctual behavior. He distinguishes between pity as a form of emotional distance and compassion as a full immersion into others’ experiences, highlighting the challenge and necessity of the latter in his work.
“The Bureaucrat” also addresses bureaucratic dehumanization, portraying how systems can extinguish recognition of individual humanity. Cnaan traces this inquiry from everyday clerks to historical figures like Adolf Eichmann, reflecting on moments when empathy is lost. He applies this questioning inwardly, connecting it to his own experiences during military service.
Despite the often somber atmosphere in his paintings, Cnaan challenges the viewer’s expectation of overt emotion, noting that overly happy or sad depictions can feel superficial. Instead, he seeks authenticity found “in the middle,” where light and dark, humor and tragedy coexist.
The exhibition at Rothschild Fine Art offers a contemplative exploration of ordinary life’s charged moments, revealing the complex interplay of light, gesture, and feeling in contemporary Israeli experience.