By Ian Sternthal, ROI Micro Grant recipient

In an era where discussions about Israel are increasingly polarized, we must keep remembering to ourselves, and reminding others, that Israel is a complex place, and not just a concept - regardless of our political orientation. This is the driving notion behind my desire to continue working with Israeli artists, promoting and publicizing their work around the world.

Thanks to the ROI microgrant, I was able to organize a book launch event for Sternthal Books latest publication, Guy Yanai's monograph 'First We Feel Then We Fall.' The event was held in the Christie's boardroom at 20 Rockefeller Plaza, surrounded by Modigliani's Picasso's, and DeKoonings.

The event allowed me to continue my quest to bring together diverse members of the New York artistic community with emerging visual artists from Israel. We had a great turn out of over 100 guests, who were treated to a variety of beverages, as well as a preview of the limited edition plexi-glass box that I designed to house the book, complete with an original drawing, and laser etchings on the box's exterior.



The book mixes photography, drawing, and painting in the elaboration of a unique visual language. The book opens with a trove of found images that have informed and inspired Yanai's practice. The 'Sources' are followed by drawings, curatorial essays by Nuit Banai and James Trainor, and twenty two plates, including twelve oil paintings on linen, and ten oil paintings on custom birch panels.

The twelve large scale paintings in the series are marked by a shallow depth of field, redolent of public billboards hawking clothing and cruises or advertisements touting the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Yet their brightly colored surfaces emerge from a rather 'democratic' tribute to a cross-section of filiations, including photographic, print media and film sources, art historical precedents, and the artist's idiosyncratic memories and chain of associations. Flipping through the book, it is impossible to ignore the relationship between the artists various influences, and the mutations they undergo as they find their way into his work. For example, Marriage and Driving in Stockholm are both inspired by Ingmar Bergman's television series "Scenes from a Marriage," Woman Outside takes a photograph by Swedish artist Hanna Liden as its point of departure, "David Hockney is Not Jewish" is partially sourced from a watercolor by the English painter, and "Holiday" is a combined response to a found photograph of St. Tropez and a picture of a boat that the artist observed in one of his nephew's books.

The connection between Yanai's semiotic flow of imagery is largely affective. His decision to compile and 'curate' an inventory of this source-material and expose it as a fundamental element in his artistic process is not without significance. What we can glean from this decision is that photography, painting, television, print media, and personal memory are all imagined as sites --or archives -- that momentarily stabilize and organize the constant data flow of life as a form of representation. These media function as egalitarian apparatuses that give shape to the content of a communal imagination but cannot arrest or transform its frictions and differences into a conclusive composition.

Thanks so much to the ROI community for the continuing support. Guy will now have the opportunity to show his work at an upcoming show this May at Harry Stendhal's new art space in Chelsea.

For more information about Sternthal Books visit our website at www.sternthalbooks.com, and our facebook page at www.facebook.com/sternthalbooks.