Focus: Guy Yanai

Guy Yanai's paintings are characterized by bold colors, simplified shapes, and a flattened depth of field. In his work, the banal is reduced to geometric segments in a stripping away of references to the tangible world in favor of a visual experience that is more akin to digital imagery—using Google Street view as a reference for a landscape for example. He often chooses everyday objects and spaces as his subjects, flattening and abstracting them in a way that seems removed and objective. Yanai has cited numerous sources of inspiration—from old, modern, and contemporary masters to digital imagery, television and advertisements—and his simplified representations may serve as a way to condense and organize the multitude of data we receive in reference to any person, place, or thing into concise representations with tight compositions. The more time spent with Yanai’s painting, the more it encourages an investigation into the perceptive space of the canvas, a place where objects, scenery and nature are conjured, sustained and gently teased away.

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Guy Yanai in his studio, Tel_Aviv 2020, photo credit_Via Tolila..jpg

“Yanai has used the New York Times, Vitra furniture catalogs, Peanuts comic strips, his iPhone photos, and classic films like Claire’s Knee (1970), directed by Eric Rohmer. “I’ve done so many paintings from this movie,” he said, showing me a reproduction of Lake Annecy (2019), which he painted from a still photo last year. “And honestly, I could do the whole rest of my life just painting from this movie.””

– ARTSY: Guy Yanai’s Painting Practice Was Made for This Moment

Guy Yanai
Pauline, 2020
Oil on canvas
27 ½ x 19 ⅝ in
(70 x 50 cm)

Guy Yanai
Blanche, 2020
Oil on canvas
27 ½ x 19 ⅝ in
(70 x 50 cm)

“Is this a sort of spiritual crisis? Maybe it is... For so long now, it’s been deadlines. And now they have vanished into uncertainty. I can take my time and work slowly, methodically. But ... not yet. Soon. I am kind of in shock but soon will adjust. I know it. Art is the reason and meaning of my life. I am thinking of Proust, of Gerhard Richter, of Cézanne, of Matisse, of producing art during hard times. All artists, all great artists went through historically difficult times. The mediocre ones succumbed to the present, the great ones never did. ”

- JUXTAPOZ: Art In Uncertain Times: A Sense of Urgency Ripped Out, Guy Yanai From Tel Aviv