Guy Yanai paints interiors, with or without people, windows overlooking gardens, flowers in vases, portraits of young women going about their daily business... In short, he paints "The Things of Life". It is no coincidence that he gave this title to one of his past exhibitions. Throughout his work, there is an echo of what the French New Wave brought to cinema, an everyday yet unexpected freshness and naturalness, captured on the spot and cleverly transposed into the world of painting through a subtle reduction of forms to colourful, rhythmic planes. The clarity of his compositions and the delicate harmonic balance of the planes create an atmosphere of strangeness and suspense, like a fleeting moment of everyday life floating in the collective memory. "You Must Change Your Life", the title chosen by Guy Yanai for this exhibition, which has been specially designed for the spaces of the Avenue Matignon gallery, is taken from a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, whose elegiac tone inspired the painter.
Guy Yanai was born in 1977 in Haifa, Israel. He lives and works between Tel Aviv and Marseille. His work has been exhibited in numerous institutions, including the Ju Ming Museum, Taipei (2025); MORE Museum, Gorssel (2024); the Nassima/Landau Foundation, Tel Aviv (2024); Kunsthal, Rotterdam (2022); Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa (2015); Velan Centre for Contemporary Art, Turin (2013); Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar. Guy Yanai’s paintings feature in numerous public and private collections in the United States, Europe and Asia, including those of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Xiao Museum (Rhizao), the Hort Mann Foundation (New York), the José & Mary Mugrabi Collection (New York), M Art Centre (Shanghai), UT Southwestern Medical Centre (Dallas), Museum Voorlinden (Wassenaar), the Drake Collection (Wassenaar), the Anita Zabludowicz Collection (London), Pon Holdings Collection (Amsterdam), the Bronfman Collection, the Arison Family Collection, and the Creutz & Partners Luxembourg Collection.
