Guy Yanai 2021

GUY YANAI

GUY YANAI THE THINGS OF LIFE

GUY YANAI: PAINTERLY INTUITION AND A FLAIR FOR THE CINEMATIC

By Terence Trouillot

It’s not surprising that Guy Yanai would call Claude Sautet’s Les Choses de la Vie (The Things of Life, 1970) one of the “anchor films” (as he calls them during a phone conversation we had in July) that has left a lasting impression on him over the COVID-19 lockdown. Apart from the somber, cinema-verité gestalt of the film and its spotlight on late 1960s/early ’70s French couture, the film’s scenery, full of bright, solid, and pastel colors—royal blue awnings, warm orange bikinis, pale yellow dresses, deep red jumpsuits, and dark green cups—are of a similar palette to Yanai’s boisterous and glowing canvases. But Sautet’s film also helps bring understanding to Yanai’s recent shift in focusing on the figure. He is creating cinematic compositions that are dramatic, sexy, and ethereal in mood. Yet they are also cool, sensitive, and austere in tone. Les Choses de la Vie becomes a lens through which to understand this process, as the artist builds on a new body of work that is loose, intuitive, and experimental.

Based on Paul Guimard’s 1967 novel of the same name, the film follows Pierre Bérard (played by Michel Piccoli), an architect in his fifties in the throes of a doting love affair with a younger woman, Hélène (played by Romy Schneider), who, in turn, is desperately infatuated with the aging protagonist. Conflicted about leaving his wife and teenage son in order to start a new life with Hélène, Pierre decides to cancel their plans to go to Tunis and instead join his wife and son on a sojourn at their vacation home on the Île de Ré. He subsequently drafts a letter to Hélène saying that he’s leaving her. On his drive over to meet with his family, however, missive still in hand, Pierre realizes the error of his ways and leaves a phone message for Hélène, professing his love for her and asking her to meet him in nearby Rennes. Alas, Pierre gets into a tragic car accident en route: his Alfa Romeo is engulfed in flames while his lifeless body lays on a patch of grass, his mind slowly drifting into darkness.

Yanai’s recent works, such as Claire and Her Boyfriend (2021), seem to harken back to Pierre and Hélène’s romance. In this instance, two lovers are embracing in a sundrenched driveway. A car sits idly in the corner, while the female figure—half-nude in a blue bikini bottom—lifts to the tips of her toes to meet her lover for a kiss, their faces blending in a deluge of auburn hair. The work recalls the opening scene of Sautet’s film, in which Pierre and Hélène, after getting up from bed, embrace each other passionately over Hélène’s typewriter. This moment is almost replicated in Yanai’s Saint-Malo (A Summer’s Tale) (2020): two figures—a fully dressed man and a woman clad in white underwear—about to touch lips in a kitchen fitted with pink cabinetry that complements the fleshy tone of the female figure’s naked skin. These scenes feel as if they were ripped out of the film, and in some case they were. At the Hospital (Romy Schneider) (2021) shows Hélène at the hospital with her hand to her mouth, as she gets the news that Pierre has passed away; a bouquet of red roses sits in the foreground. Other examples include The Accident, The Letter, and The Café at Rennes (all 2021)—reimagined stills from the movie that speak to moments of heartbreak and tragedy, but also to unbridled intimacy, evoking a nostalgia for what was perhaps lost during the lonely months of the lockdown.

The dark romanticism and style of the period could be what drew Yanai to this film. I’d also argue that the cinematography and framing of the Sautet shots were a likely inspiration for Yanai’s recent compositions. Les Choses de la Vie is almost entirely made up of close-up and medium close-up shots. The camera moves jauntily around the characters, then focuses tightly on the faces of our lovely couple—camera angles that take notice of the most stirring and mundane of subtle expressions. We see something similar in Yanai’s recent portraits of the painter Peter Doig, the filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, and the writer Michel Houellebecq. Rendered from images Yanai gathered from social media, the works are straightforward studies of people—the luminaries’ faces invading the expanse of the canvas. In Jean-Luc Godard (Instagram Live) (2020), the nonagenarian is pictured lighting a cigar and wearing a green sweater vest; his eyes, staring down at the flame, are blackened by the shadows on his cheeks.. The image is expressive; Yanai’s signature paint marks give the portrait life: a complex web of daubs and swatches of color that come together to make a whole picture. There is a quietness to the piece as well, an uneasy calmness,

as if a glimpse of the legendary auteur’s persona has been frozen in time. As the title suggests, the source photo comes from a screenshot of Godard’s Instagram live conversation with Lionel Baier, in which the filmmaker likens the spread of COVID-19 to the spread of information, i.e., calling rapid digital communication an insidious virus. In some ways, we can see Yanai’s portrait as an exercise in slowing down the flow of information, bringing it closer to the stillness of his painterly surfaces.

For the past year, like many of us, Yanai has been glued to some version of a screen— be it on his phone, computer, or television—watching movies, television series, social media clips, etc. What could have been a nauseating, overabundant consumption of media, has become a wellspring of serious intrigue and reflection for the artist. The artist was extremely selective about what he chose to look at and engage with, and he took the opportunity to challenge his approach to painting. “There was a sense of urgency,” the artist tells me, in explaining his process of making new work during the pandemic. He felt a need to explore new ideas, to make his paintings “more personal, narrative, and figurative.”

As it were, Yanai’s earlier tableaux have more frequently been marked by the absence of the figure: images of architectural landscapes, depictions of home interiors, and often still lifes of plants—an investigation into the surface and sensuality of domestic space. But now, Yanai looks to figures, not only to explore different ideas, themes and subject matter, but also to communicate (or un-communicate) through painting the complexities of the human psyche.

As Yanai quips to me over the phone, “the superficial is the most profound,” referring to the paintings and the concepts behind his canvases. I can’t help but think how his more recent work somehow both defies and surrenders to this logic. For example, Pauline (2020) sees a young woman sitting at a dining table with a glass of red wine and a plate of what looks to be fruit and vegetables. Her head is pointed downward toward her food, her chin resting on the back of her hands, fingers interlaced. She looks pensive, her pose and demeanor introspective. She is seemingly despondent because she has been left alone for supper. The piece’s color scheme of soft lavenders and vibrant blues, not to mention the figure’s rose-colored skin, gives the canvas a

lighter more joyful mood, which is in sharp contrast to the woman’s somber gesture. Conversely, in Aurora and Mirabelle Outside (both 2021), the figures have their backs turned to the viewer; their visages are only a figment of our imagination. They look withdrawn, distant, emotionless, as if they’re just another object in the space. This refusal to interface with the audience draws the figures back into the picture plane, bringing the focus to the other elements in the paintings—the shrubbery, trees, wine glass, lounge chair—and also to the quality and dynamism of Yanai’s effortless brushstrokes and treatment of the surface of his paintings. We are left to wonder what these lonely bodies are thinking, what their stories are. But in the end, we get lost in the formal aspects of the work: its composition, colors, and brushstrokes.

Beyond the allusions to David Hockney, Yanai’s virtuosity is also reminiscent of the Post-Impressionist painter Georges Seurat, and it additionally harkens back to Alma Thomas’s careful mark-making in her color field abstractions. The lozenge-style brushstrokes—oftentimes extending to long rectangular strips of paint—build upon each other to create beautiful, jagged images of time and space. The accumulation of these colorful streaks of pigment feels like a frenzied mess carefully arranged in perfect harmony—as if Yanai were building a house made of match sticks. There’s uncertainty, precarity to his tableaux. His marks do as much to tell a narrative as do his cast of characters. Together, they complement each other, helping us to find room and time to sit still and think about art, gesture, form, and life—to remove ourselves from the daily clatter, and from our screens.

Terence Trouillot is an associate editor of frieze and a contributing editor at BOMB Magazine, He has written about contemporary art and visual culture for art-agenda, Arts.Black, artnet News, The Brooklyn Rail, and The Village Voice. In 2019, he was appointed to the board of AICA-USA, the American branch of the International Association of Art Critics. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

1/2 x 23 5/8 inches

31 1/2 x 23 5/8 inches

80 x 60 cm

Aurora, 2021

31 1/2 x 23 5/8 inches

80 x 60 cm

1/2 x 23 5/8 inches

x 60 cm

1/2 x 23 5/8 inches

x 60 cm

31 1/2 x 23 5/8 inches

80 x 60 cm

59

47 1/4 inches

150 x 120 cm

59 x 78 3/4 inches

150 x 200 cm

59 x 78 3/4 inches

150 x 200 cm

150 x 200 cm

70 7/8 x 59 inches

180 x 150 cm

40 x 30 cm

3/4 x 11 7/8 inches

x 30 cm

GUY YANAI

Born in Haifa, Israel in 1977

Lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel and Marseilles, France

EDUCATION

2000

BFA, Hampshire College, Amherst, MA

1997

New York Studio School, New York, NY

1996

Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art, Pont-Aven, France

1996

Parsons School of Design, New York, NY

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2021

“The Things of Life,“ Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY

“The Caboose,” Praz-Delavallade, Los Angeles, CA

2020

“ÉTÉ 2020,” Niels Kantor Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

“LIFE IN GERMANY,” Galerie Conrads, Düsseldorf, Germany

2019

Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY

“Sentimental Spring,” SOCO Gallery, Charlotte, NC

“The Conformist,” Praz-Delavallade, Paris, France

2018

“Boy On an Island,” Galerie Conrads, Düsseldorf, Germany

2017

“Barbarian in the Garden,” Praz-Delavallade, Los Angeles, CA

“Speak, America,” Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, New York, NY

“Calm European,” Flatland Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands

“Love of Beginnings,” Galerie Derouillon, Paris, France

2016

“Fox Hill Road,” Rod Barton Gallery, Brussels, Belgium

“Mademoiselle Albertine est Partie! Kaye Donachie and Guy Yanai,” Appartement, Paris, France

2015

“Ordinary Things,” Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa, Israel

“Ancienne Rive,” Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, New York, NY

2014

“Diary,” Galerie Derouillon, Paris, France

“First Battle Lived Accident,” Alon Segev Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel

2013

“Accident Nothing,” Aran Cravey Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

“Lived and Laughed and Loved and Left,” LaMontagne Gallery, Boston, MA

“Battle, Therapy, Living Room” (curated by Noam Segel), Velan Center for Contemporary Art, Turin, Italy

2011

“First We Feel Then We Fall,” Alon Segev Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel

2010

“Four Guys Sitting in a Subaru Drinking Grapejuice,” The Spaceship on HaYarkon 70, Tel Aviv, Israel

1999

“Thesis: Easthampton Interiors,” Hampshire College Art Gallery, Amherst, MA

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2021

“People in Time,” Asia Art Center, Taipei, Taiwan

“36+ Paintings,” Harper’s, East Hampton, NY

“Spot On,” Galerie Conrads, Düsseldorf, Germany

2020

“Constructing an Imaginary” (curated by Domenico De Chirico), Badr El Jundi Gallery, Málaga, Spain

“La terre est bleue comme une orange,” Praz-Delavallade, Paris, France

“High Voltage,” Nassima-Landau Project, Tel Aviv, Israel

“The West’s Awake,” Mayo Contemporary, Mayo, Ireland

“Sound & Color,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY

“Joint Gesture,” Galerie Conrads, Düsseldorf, Germany

“INTERIORS: Hello from the Living Room,” 1969 Gallery, New York, NY

“Do You Think It Needs A Cloud?,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY

“Leaving and Returning,” Braverman Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel

“To Paint Is To Love Again” (curated by Olivier Zahm), Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

“Flowers Are Part of our Story and our History,” Faltland Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands

2019

“Le Magasin at Unit 5,” Praz-Delavallade, Los Angeles, CA

“Door into Summer/M’s Collection +,” Maho Kuhota Gallery, Tokyo, Japan

“Domestic Comfort,” Flatland Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands

“YUMMY YUMMY,” Flatland Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands

“Betaland,” Galerie Conrads, Düsseldorf, Germany

2018

“I Dream My Painting and Then I Paint My Dream,” UNIT 5, Los Angeles, CA

“The Barn Show 2018,” Johannes Vogt Gallery, East Hampton, NY

“As You Like It / C’est comme vous voulez,” Praz-Delavallade, Los Angeles, CA

“Jerry, Show Me Love!,” Galerie Derouillon, Paris, France

“Reflector,” Luciana Brito - NY Project, New York, NY

“Belief in Giants,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY

2017

“L’anti-destin” 64 rue de Monceau, Paris, France

“Surreal House,” The Pill, Istanbul, Turkey

“Post Analog Painting II,” The Hole, New York, NY

2016

“Taste my braindrops,” Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami, FL

“What’s Up 2.0,” London, United Kingdom

“Tableaux,” Tristian Koenig, Melbourne, Australia

“The Ties That Bind,” David Achenbach Projects, Wuppertal, Germany

“Cause the Grass Don’t Grow and the Sky Ain’t Blue,” Praz-Delavallade, Paris, France

“From Andy Warhol to Contemporary Art: Culture, Color, Body,” Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa, Israel

“Bisou Magique,” Galerie Derouillon, Paris, France

“Gardening,” Flatland Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands

“Itch Under the Skin,” Charlotte Fogh Gallery, Aarhus, Denmark

“Imagine,” Brand New Gallery, Milan, Italy

2015

“Launch,” Rod Barton Gallery, Brussels, Belgium

“Fresh Fruit,” Les Gens Heureux, Copenhagen, Denmark

“Words Without Letters” (curated by Guy Yanai), Alon Segev Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel

“Refiguring,” Coburn Projects, London, United Kingdom

2014

“Par Ici Mon Kiki,” Le Coeur, Paris, France

“Summer Mixer,” Joshua Liner Gallery, New York, NY

“Informal Forms,” Aran Cravey Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

“Just Before Brazil,” A.L.I.C.E. Gallery, Brussels, Belgium

2013

“GROWTH,” Charlotte Fogh Gallery, Aarhus, Denmark

2012

“Domesticated Souls,” A.L.I.C.E. Gallery, Brussels, Belgium

“The Irreconcilable,” The Spaceship on HaYarkon 70, Tel Aviv, Israel

2011

“Italy-Israel: Senses of the Mediterranean,” Milan, Italy and Tel Aviv, Israel

“Possibility of a Book,” Sommer Contemporary Art S2, Tel Aviv, Israel

2010

“Israelism,” Shay Arye Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel

2008

“Recent Purchases from the Israel Discount Bank Collection,” Ashdod Museum of Art, Ashdod, Israel

“Artist Portraits,” Givataim Municipal Gallery, Givataim, Israel

Published on the occasion of the exhibition

GUY YANAI

THE THINGS OF LIFE

21 October – 27 November 2021

Miles McEnery Gallery

525 West 22nd Street

New York NY 10011

tel +1 212 445 0051

www.milesmcenery.com

Publication © 2021 Miles McEnery Gallery

All rights reserved

Essay © 2021 Terence Trouillot

Director of Publications

Anastasija Jevtovic, New York, NY

Photography by Christopher Burke Studio, New York, NY

Elad Sarig, Tel Aviv, Israel

Jeanchristophe Lett, Marseille, France

Color separations by Echelon, Santa Monica, CA

Catalogue designed by McCall Associates, New York, NY

ISBN: 978-1-949327-59-5

Cover: Aurora, (detail), 2021