Nino Mier Gallery presents group exhibition "TO PAINT IS TO LOVE AGAIN."

Curated by Olivier Zahm

January 18–28, 2020

Though his work takes him all over the world, Tel Aviv-based painter Guy Yanai’s graphic style is heavily influenced by the white-walled Bauhaus buildings and distinctive light of his hometown. Yanai tells Culture Trip why he finds the city so inspiring, and why he believes the food scene is the best in the world.
 

Every fall the art season begins—and to mark its beginning, galleries and museums put their best feet forward, starting off the season with exhibitions that showcase their very best. Here we look at works by 7 artists who are season openers this year. See their shows on view, and collect these investment pieces by these talk-of-the-town, blue-chip artists!

FLATLAND is thrilled to announce its new group exhibition: YUMMY YUMMY. It deals with various forms of the appeal of art in its contemporary context, taking the deliciousness of its term as a starting point for an examination of current ideas of seduction and gluttony. Curator Josephine van Schendel, recently graduated cum laude from KABK, has selected works by 8 international artists, comprised of Flatland Gallery’s represented artists and guest artists.

Praz-Delavallade Los Angeles is pleased to announce:  “I Dream My Painting and Then I Paint My Dream” the inaugural group exhibition for Praz-Delavallade and 1301PE’s annex project space, UNIT 5. 

“I dream my painting and then I paint my dream”, an ethos uttered by the late Van Gogh, famously articulates a process of grappling with the medium of painting to function as a conduit for larger concepts beyond the domain of reality. A dreamscape abstracts the ordinary to a world of possibilities, one where everyday banalities lose their index; unhinged from their clichés to the extraordinary world of the unfamiliar.

Group Exhibition: Matthew Brandt, Heather Cook, Alexander Kroll, Dan Levenson, Nathan Mabry, Amanda Ross-Ho, Joe Reihsen, Jim Shaw, Marnie Weber, Brian Wills, Guy Yanai

The Johannes Vogt Gallery is pleased to present:

THE BARN SHOW 2018

July 7 – July 29, 2018
Opening Reception: Saturday July 7, 2018, 6 – 8pm
 

Praz-Delavallade Los Angeles is pleased to present:

AS YOU LIKE IT – C’EST COMME VOUS VOULEZ

28 June – 18 August, 2018
​Opening: Thursday, 28 June, 6 – 8 pm

Galerie Derouillon is proud to present our new summer group show 

Opening May 17th, from 5 to 9 pm

 

Aiming to introduce the New York audience to a more experimental and younger facet of its program, Luciana Brito – NY Project is pleased to announce the opening of its third exhibition, Reflector, taking place on March 6, 2018, amidst the busy Armory Week. This group show establishes a dialog between three young São Paulo artists represented by the gallery – Pedro Caetano (b. 1979), Rafael Carneiro (b. 1985), and Tiago Tebet (b. 1986) – and a selection of artists from the same generation who are based in New York City: Gustavo Prado (b. 1981, Brazil), Nicole Wittenberg (b. 1979, USA), Guy Yanai (b. 1977, Israel), and G.T. Pellizzi (b. 1978, Mexico).

The exhibition features paintings – a language in which light plays an essential role – as well as sculptural investigations and installations that use optical and luminous elements, like mirrors and light bulbs. This shared characteristic inspires the title of the show and establishes a common thread between practices as distinct as those of Rafael Carneiro and Gustavo Prado, for example. Furthermore, by creating a dialog between artists who live and work in either São Paulo and New York, the gallery aims to propose a mirroring of sorts between the cities that are home to its two headquarters, promoting encounters between the artistic production from two locations that are far apart from one another, both geographically and culturally.

After a successful solo exhibition with Praz-Delavallade in Los Angeles at the end of 2017, and participation at a couple of art fairs earlier this year, Guy Yanai will be opening his first solo show of 2018 at Conrads Galerie. Continuing his long-time collaboration with the Düsseldorf-based gallery, and pursuing his overall prolific output, he will be showing a new body of work titled Boy On An Island.

Sparked around the artist's dream about a boy stuck on an island, this group of paintings see a revision to some of Yanai's most recognizable motifs, such as plants and boats, as well as the introduction of new imagery. Sadly, the title image of the show was never realized, but it was that idea that intuitively pushed the artist to chose the remaining images for the exhibition. Seemingly incoherent in their relations with each other, they are all images to which the artist can relate strongly on a personal level. Whether depicting the poolside of La Colombe d’Or hotel, a plant picture from an old Vitra catalog, an autumn image from Peanuts comics, or one of many images of boats, they are all portraying the nostalgia towards particular moments in his life. Painted using unique linear brush work, a style that flattens the image but still uses subtle tones to depict depth and light-play, these works intrigued us to the point we had to ask the Tel Aviv-based artist to tell us a bit more about it.

Praz-Delavallade Los Angeles is pleased to present its first solo exhibition by Guy Yanai, opening on November 4 and on view through December 22, 2017. Yanai’s practice is fueled by fables, stories and hymns—each painting a reflection of the pragmatic side of our life. In his isolated moments one may find a smiling child, a big splash, lonely banana, bristling cactus, modernist lamp, a singing bird or a tiny boat gliding on placid waters below a clear sky. These individual vignettes bleed into one another and could continue forever, suspended in time. Many of Yanai’s subjects are intentionally recognizable and commonplace, rendered into a pixelated appearance.

by Catherine Hong

When Guy Yanai was 7 years old, he and his family moved from Haifa, Israel, to Framingham, Massachusetts, in the suburbs of Boston. The shock of dislocation he experienced is one he’s never forgotten, with the family’s split-level house at the center of his memories. But what did that house really look like? Thirty-three years later, the artist turned to Google Street View.

The painting Yanai produced, Fox Hill Road (2017), was a central image of his solo show at New York’s Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe gallery this past summer. Simultaneously melancholy, mundane, and joyful, it has the woozy, strangely flattened perspective familiar to anyone who’s shopped for real estate using Google technology. It also has the dreamlike quality that comes with the recollection of a long-distant childhood home.

by Cassie Davies

Guy Yanai’s solo exhibition at Ameringer McEnery Yohe in New York takes its title from an unwritten book by the Russian-born American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. When Nabokov moved to Europe in 1961, to live at the Montreux Palace hotel in Switzerland, he planned to write a sequel to his celebrated autobiography Speak, Memory. It was to be called Speak, America. The book, however, was never written, and Nabokov died in 1977 leaving behind the “shell” of an unwritten, autobiographical sequel.

by Jill Singer

Much has been made of the fact that the young Israeli artist Guy Yanai uses painting — an ancient, laborious technique — as his medium, even as he embraces the digital and new media norms of today (even going so far as to reference pixelation in his technique, with short, deliberate bands of color). But I can’t imagine his work would be as indelible as it is in any other medium: It’s stuck with me since I first encountered it in 2014, and his style — which mixes the aesthetics of a transcontinental childhood spent in Haifa, Israel and suburban Boston, with a dash of Hockney — is instantly recognizable. A new exhibition of works on view at Ameringer McEnery Yohe in New York until August 18 deepens his body of work, meditating on experience, memory, and language in a series of 13 new paintings.

Guy Yanai in dialogue with Steven Cox

Steven Cox: Can you tell me a little about yourself, your background, and how/when you first started working full-time as an artist?

Guy Yanai: I was born in Haifa. Then moved to the states in 1984, outside of Boston. I was always into art. It took many years before all I did was this.

SC: Can you tell me about your current studio and working routine? Do you have any morning rituals or habits that contribute towards a productive day within the studio?

GY: I moved to a ground floor studio about a year and a half ago. I fully redid the space, put in good lighting, a kitchen, strong AC units, everything I could. Before that I was in the same building but on the third floor with no elevator (big shipping traumas), no bathroom, no sink, and no kitchen, so it’s very nice to have the studio I have now. I walk to the studio, usually get coffee on the way, maybe granola. I make good coffee now in the studio as well.  The thing that really contributes to good productive days is just to really have a studio practice. The more I'm there the better every day gets.

Artists included: Avni Arbas - Babi Badalov - Raphaël Barontini - Neil Beloufa - Aylin Bozbiciu - Nejat Devrim - Max Ernst - Ayse Erkmen - Bedri Rahmi Eyüboglu - Daniel Firman - Atilla & Filiz Özgüven Galatali - Leylâ Gediz - Douglas Gordon- Selma Gürbüz - Linder- Eva Nielsen - Jill Magid - Marcel Mariën - Thomas Mailaender - Hubert Marot - Ahmet Ögüt - Alex Palenski - Elsa Sahal - Apolonia Sokol - Georges Tony Stoll - Ali Emir Tapan - Marion Verboom - Guy Yanai

Par Lisa Vignoli

LES BON TITRES ONT PLUSIEURS VIES. L'amour des commencements, texte du psychanalyste français Jean-Bertrand Pontalis (1924-2013) datant de 1986, par exemple, renaît ces jours-ci—en anglais—dans une galerie parisienne avec l'exposition « Love of beginnings ». L'artiste israélien Guy Yanai a découvert cet ouvrage il y a une dizaine d'années. Depuuis, il a lu tout Pontalis, ou presque. Le plasticien affiche d'ailleurs, au fil de ses œuvres, une passion française, qui transparaît dans l'exposition. « Ça flirte avec l'obsession, sourit-il, mais pas seulement. Il y a sans doute quleuqe chose de l'ordre de la frustration, de la jalousie. Je ne serai jamais un Européen. Pourtant, tout ce qui m'intéresse du point de vue esthétique, intellectuel ou artistique vient de là. »

by Andie Cusick

The Love of Beginnings book was actually given to me by a shrink that I was talking to years ago, like maybe over ten years ago,” says Israeli artist Guy Yanai, whose latest exhibition of the same title was influenced by JB Pontalis’ autobiography.

It was strange to get a book from her, and even stranger that the book had tons of highlights and notes all around it. As if I could see and hear her reading it. I remember reading it so slowly,” he adds. “What struck me the most (and resonated) was the non-linear fashion of the autobiography—these sort of black holes that appeared between periods of his life. I think that there a few of these black holes between the three paintings of this show. Maybe this show is the beginnings that remain between each of the works, maybe not.”

Galerie Derouillon is pleased to present the second solo exhibition of the painter Guy Yanai in Paris.

Opening reception: Thursday 16 March, from 6 to 9pm.

Beginnings have a personal resonance for Yanai. He has spent his life starting over, moving between continents and across countries--new friends, new home--finally coming full circle and settling where his journey first began, in Israel, the land of the displaced. But even there he remains a foreigner, ensconced in his studio on a shady street in south Tel Aviv, rootless and moveable as the potted plants he often likes to paint. Far from disorienting, this outsider’s gaze is the perfect position for a painter who loves to look.

Love of Beginnings is Yanai’s second solo exhibition at Galerie Derouillon. At the centre of the show are three oil paintings, arranged in no particular order or sequence. Club Med Serre Chevalier (2017) depicts a resort in France, based on photographs taken by tourists and posted to Tripadvisor. Kitchen (2016/17) is a view of the artist’s apartment in Tel Aviv. The Piano Lesson (2017) is Yanai’s transcription of Matisse’s painting of the same title from exactly 100 years ago.

The breakthrough success of Lawrence van Hagen’s What’s Up, held in London earlier this year, underlined for its young curator the need for more global surveys of emerging and established contemporary artists.

What’s Up 2.0, the second of Lawrence’s ambitious series of shows, opens a week before Frieze Art Fair. With the kind support of House of the Nobleman, Susanne van Hagen, and Amazon property, What’s Up 2.0 will exhibit its dynamic range of artists to collectors from the capital, as well as art aficionados from all over the world.

Guy Yanai to be featured in group show, THE TIES THAT BIND, at David Achenbach Projects outside of Düsseldorf, Germany.

Artists list: Georg Baselitz, Sam Francis, Gotthard Graubner, Daniel Heidkamp, Alex Katz, Rosy Keyser, A.R. Penck, Jon Pilkington, Kasper Sonne, Chris Succo, Norbert Tadeusz, Anke Weyer, Guy Yanai

Curated by Clemence Duchon & Flavie Loizon

Artists list : Mustafah Abdulaziz, Pierre Ardouvin, Tauba Auerbach, Rana Begum, Mohamed Bourouissa, Kadar Brock, Micky Clément, Petra Collins, Gregory Crewdson, Yanis Dadoum, Sam Durant, Antoine Espinasseau, Matias Faldbakken, Harry Gruyaert, Nils Guadagnin, Ren Hang, Laurent Kronental, Ulrich Lebeuf, Thomas Lélu, Thomas Mailaender, Ari Mar- copoulos, John Miller, Robert Montgomery, François Morellet, Julien Nédélec, Amanda Ross-Ho, Viviane Sassen, Taryn Simon, Tony Stamolis, Thomas Struth, Mika Tajima, Juergen Teller, Ed Templeton, Joep van Lieshout, Thomas Vergne, Adrien Vescovi, Johannes Wohnseifer, Guy Yanai

Guy Yanai featured in a group show, Bisou Magique, at Galerie Derouillon and curated by Yundler Brondino Verlag, Guy Yanai and Aurore Chauve's publishing house.

A solo exhibition, Fox Hill Road, of recent works by Guy Yanai will open at Rod Barton, Brussels on 19 April and be on view through 28 May 2016.

Guy Yanai to participate in a group exhibition, IMAGINE, at Brand New Gallery in Milan, Italy from 2 March - 2 April 2016.

Guy Yanai to partipate in a duo show with Kaye Donachie at Appartement in Paris, France on view from 15 January - 30 January 2016.

Guy Yanai's solo exhibition, Ordinary Things, at Haifa Museum of Art in Israel on view from 12 December 2015 - 4 May 2016.

In a recent review of Maureen Gallace’s current exhibition at 303 Gallery by Barry Schwabsky, the subject of whether painting a landscape is relevant in today’s era was brought up. Gallace’s landscapes are certainly an example of how a landscape can be far more than just an aesthetic rendering of a natural scene. They present moments in time that exhibit specific natural and subconscious occurrences. In a way, her handling of light and movement of natural elements makes her a contemporary Impressionist painter.

By Amah-Rose Abrams

It has been an exciting year for contemporary art, with a young generation of artists pushing the boundaries both in terms of materials and subject matters. But with so much going on it's easy to miss out. In an effort to capture the moment, we at artnet News have put together a directory of the most exciting artists showing, living, and working in Europe at the moment. Here's Part Two of our list, continuing yesterday's Part One.

Interview by Erin Spens

Guy Yanai is an Israeli painter living and working in Tel Aviv. His work often depicts everyday objects and places using vibrant colors and simple shapes. Like snapshots of memories, the paintings feel familiar and yet detached from reality, bridging a wonderful divide between then and now.

A group exhibition, A House Without Rooms, organized by Guy Yanai at Galerie Torri, Paris, France is on view from 22 October to 21 November 2015. Other artists participating in the show are Linus Bill & Adrien Horni, Luc Fuller, Alex Katz, Ridley Howard, and Alistair Frost.

From Peter Shire´s eclectic and playful vocabulary, over Guy Yanai´s light and colour infused scenes, to Matthew Feyld´s minimalistic patterns, all three artists echo extracts of everyday life into intriguing visual compositions. The exhibition brings together new paintings by Guy Yanai and Matthew Feyld, and ceramics and sculpture by Peter Shire.

One of New York's most energetic patrons of emerging artists, Carole Server has been collecting up a storm with her huband Oliver Frankel ever since they caught the art bug half a decade ago—helped by a keen eye and voracious visual appetite, in particular for paintings in all forms. Here, Server, who is also a trustee at the Bronx Museum, shares her picks from EXPO CHICAGO.

Does the sea have a door?, is there a house with no room?, are there words without letters?

These are some of the questions that my son Romy asks me. He has no idea how much his thinking influences me, a thinking that is not yet rooted in the limited possibilities that life inflicts on us, even the most poetic of us.

Letters without words, yes, of course. James Joyce took the furthest right? Finnegans Wake, an unreadable book that has stretched works and letters to the fullest. But words without letters? A form with no structure? Just the question as a thought is enough for me.

By Ari Samuel

Artist Guy Yanai straddles the fine line between classical painter and contemporary hyphenate. The 35-year-old, Tel Aviv-based artist’s works often depict the whimsical trots of his globe: sailing in the Aeolian Islands off the coast of Italy, bunkering down in the French countryside amidst sun-drenched fauna and terra cotta-roofed houses; or simply harnessing a keen observation and infatuation with the small moments of life that we tend to neglect, but can influence us in a big and prominent way. All of these influences, and more, are deftly enveloped into an original and signature style for which Yanai is known—a style that has garnered the attention of some of the world’s leading art galleries, collectors and fashion brands.  

By Liz Von Klemperer

Guy Yanai’s pieces fuse the placid landscapes and still lives of traditional painting with a pixilated style inspired by retro computer graphics.  His solo show Ancienne Rive at the Ameringer McEnery Yohe gallery features fifteen new paintings in which Yanai uses fragmented stripes of color to demonstrate the interplay between the past, present, and future of art, as well as his own sense of displacement.

Guy Yanai's fragmented stripes are paralleled by thick, vivid colors and banal subjects. "Ancienne Rive," meaning ancient river, calls upon ideas of history, authenticity, and something with deep roots, which contradicts the artist's self proclaimed feelings of loneliness, foreign alienation and the notion of being both nowhere and everywhere. 

Hours before he was to board a plane home to Tel Aviv, I sat with Guy Yanai in the middle of Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe in Chelsea, encircled by a selection of his light-infused paintings. Each of the pieces consists of stacked, horizontal stripes of pigment, as if their scenes were viewed from behind a subtle scrim of blinds. Although he’d been in New York for less than a week, for the successful opening of “Ancienne Rive,” the solo show of new paintings that surrounded us, Yanai told me he was ready to return to his studio and to painting—to the work that most fulfills him.

REFIGURING

AUSTIN EDDY, TAMARA GONZALEZ, SHARA HUGHES, RYAN SCHNEIDER, GUY YANAI

COBURN PROJECTS, MAYFAIR, LONDON

13 July - 5 September 2015 Viewings by appointment

The young Israeli artist Guy Yanai is obsessed with borders — the way the paint touches the edge of a canvas; the liminal spaces between people and between people and places. “The show is really about edges between many things,” he says of his solo exhibition “Ancienne Rive,” which opens tomorrow at the Chelsea gallery Ameringer McEnery Yohe. Like much of his previous work, the 15 new paintings Yanai created for this show convey the everyday: sailboats, the sea, plants, a quiet lawn and a horseback rider are meticulously painted in vibrant horizontal stripes. “It’s not really clear where they are, or what space they are,” says Yanai. “They’re nowhere, and in that sense it’s really a very synthetic kind of work.”

Guy Yanai created an edition of 50 archival pigment print's for Boat With No Sailors.

Guy Yanai abstracts mundane objects, landscapes, and architecture through decisive brush strokes applied in measured, horizontal stripes–the result: brightly colored compositions that remind us of Jonas Wood and David Hockney. In Boat With No Sailors, Yanai imposes geometric order on a familiar subject to create a succinct and pleasing representation of a sailboat gliding on water. Guy Yanai's solo exhibition Ancienne Rive opens Thursday, July 9 from 6-8pm at Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe Gallery in Chelsea.

By Tara Lange

Guy Yanai‘s 2015 work highlights his creative evolution and newfound confidence as an artist. The Israeli born painter currently lives and works in Tel Aviv, and the colorful palate of his surroundings as well as the vibrant, live-life-in-the-moment energy of his city shines through in his pieces.

By Ali Morris

Appearing like pixilated images, brightly coloured weavings or even needlepoint, Guy Yanai’s oil on linen paintings depict simplified interpretations of the everyday painted in meticulously applied strokes of colour. From pot plants to sail boats, the artist paints ordinary still life subjects and sun-soaked landscapes but in a way that makes them current, gliding the brush across the canvas, one line at a time.  

Galerie Derouillon is pleased to present Diary, an exhibition of new paintings by Guy Yanai.  The exhibition opens on Thursday 13 November and will remain on view through 20 December 2014. The exhibition is accompanied by a limited edition catalogue, which includes a conversation with Timothee Chaillou and an essay by Barbara Sirieix.

Guy Yanai was born in 1977 in Haifa, Israel, Guy Yanai currently lives and works in Tel Aviv. He attended Parsons School of Design and the New York Studio School, and received a BFA from Hampshire College, Amherst, MA.