GUY YANAI – BARBARIAN IN THE GARDEN
2017-11-13For his exhibition Barbarian In The Garden, Yanai presents a series of paintings and drawings that capture his alienation to memory and places, flattened and made shallow through solid blocks of color that create the appearance of cut-outs or collage. He creates a mise en scène by the activations of separate vignettes from distant memories such as a painting of George Washington on a horse—drawn from a recollection of when he made a similar drawing for his brother around the age of 7—juxtaposed with paintings of plant life, unoccupied interiors such as a view from his apartment in Tel-Aviv or a hotel in Rayol-Canadel-sur-Mer.
Influenced by impressionist masters such as Matisse and Cézanne, as well as contemporary figures like Tal R and David Hockney, Yanai’s personal style mixes the aesthetics of his transcontinental childhood spent between Haifa, Israel and the suburbs of Boston, where he first drew inspiration from scenes of everyday life. In his paintings, the banal is reduced to geometric segments where he then abandons references to the tangible world in favor of a visual experience that is more akin to digital imagery – such as a painting of Palermo as seen through Google Street View.
Opposite – Grey Sofa (Barbarian In The Garden), 2017
Exhibition runs through to December 22nd, 2017
Praz-Delavallade
6150 Wilshire Blvd
CA 90048 Los Angeles
USA
