Tristan Unrau (b. 1989, Brampton, Canada) challenges presumptions that artists possess a signature, recognizable style, instead proposing that voice belongs to the painting as much as the painter. Propelled by curiosity and executed with a dazzling ventriloquism, little is off-limits in Unrau’s vision: subjects, tropes, and approaches from across the art historical canon include cartoonish figures and impressionistic interiors alongside geometric abstractions and atmospheric landscapes, while other “reenactments,” as Unrau has referred to his artworks, recall Golden Age portraits or Romantic allegories. In one sense, Unrau’s polystylism exposes the unreliability of long-established methods for engaging visual art, subverting the notion that distinct visual cues encode objective meaning, authenticate authorship, or determine market value. Considered another way, the artist’s radical embrace of plurality suggests that every mode of expression available to the painter offers, too, a corresponding entry point for the viewer. While conceptual on its face, at the heart of Unrau’s project is a humanism best conveyed by the deep pathos of his images. Evocations of longing, fear, self-examination, and the infinite unnamable states in between emerge through facial expressions and settings, hue and brushwork, revivifying painting’s ongoing endeavor to capture the paradoxical universality and particularity of the human condition.

Unrau has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Sebastian Gladstone, Los Angeles, CA (2023); 56 Henry, New York, NY (2022); Unit 17, Vancouver, Canada (2021 and 2018); and Towards, Toronto, Canada (2020), among others. Recent group exhibitions include 50 Paintings, Milwaukee Art Museum, WI (2023); Drawings, Clint Roenisch Gallery, Toronto, Canada (2018); and Cynthia Daignault: There is nothing I could say that I haven’t thought before, FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY (2017), among others. Unrau lives and works in Los Angeles.