“Of Flesh & bones” at PS122 Gallery, Press Release Essay by Elyse Goldberg
Flesh & Bones, featuring works by the award recipients of the 2023 -2024 Paintings Space 122 Studio Program. Opening reception: July 12, 6:00-8:00pm. On view through July 28, 2024.
In Suzanne Unrein’s major painting “What Lies Ahead” (2021), we see ecstatic ruminations on life and mortality, desire and temptation. This is evident in the elevated, expressionistic meanderings of fusing bodies that appear and disappear, with flesh unrecognizable as gender specific. Various passages in the muscular imagery merge the cacophony of multi realities, existing simultaneously within her overall fields of exquisitely fluid use of color and line. Utilizing figurative abstraction, her figures guilelessly and chaotically merge into humanoids/animals. Devoid of boundaries, chaos abounds. There is not order in the sensual images, polymorphous, enticing, loaded with vivid color - blues, reds, purples - against a bright white canvas sea. They ooze with a fury and life - tricksters, denying the eventual ramifications of decay.
“RISKY BUSINESS: A PAINTER’S FORuM at the TORRANCE ART MUSEUM” Press release
As concerns and expectations of AI begin to dominate the narrative in our increasingly technologically dependent society some artists reply with the personal mark, risk taking, chance, the unknown endpoint, the illogical, the mystery…to produce a reflection of a living, very human, experience
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS: Nick Aguayo, Sharon Barnes, Michael Bauer, Fatemeh Burnes, Galen Cheney, Mark Dutcher, Barbara Friedman, John Goetz, Zachary Keeting, Robert Kingston, Christopher Kuhn, Annie Lapin, Michael Mancari, Ali Smith, Vian Sora, Marie Thibeault, Liliane Tomasko, Chris Trueman, Suzanne Unrein, Audrey Tulmiero Welch.
Curated by Marie Thibeault and Max Presneill.
“ART AUCTION TO SUPPORT BARYSHNIKOV ARTS”
December 10, 2023 - Baryshnikov Arts, founded in 2005 by Mikhail Baryshnikov, is rooted in the belief that artists hold irreplaceable roles in our world as they shape perspectives, offer new approaches, and initiate crucial conversations in complex social, political, and cultural environments. We continue to support Artistic Director Mikhail Baryshnikov’s mission of establishing thriving creative laboratories and performance spaces for artists from around the world.
2023 FST STUDIO PROJECTS FUND AWARD RECIPIENT: SUZANNE UNREIN
Suzanne Unrein has been honored with the 2023 FST StudioProjects Fund Award. The FST StudioProjects Fund, established in 2017 by Frederieke Sanders Taylor, supports the vital practice of studio art in New York City by providing studio rent for emerging artists. This prestigious award acknowledges Unrein's exceptional contributions to the arts, aligning with Frederieke's enduring commitment to fostering new artistic talent and expanding public access to the arts. Explore Suzanne Unrein's journey.
“Re-Wilding: Joanne Carson & Suzanne Unrein” at Sara Nightingale, Press release essay by Dan Cameron
Sara Nightingale Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of "Re-Wilding," featuring works by JoAnne Carson and Suzanne Unrein, on October 22, 2022. The exhibition explores an intimate and dynamic relationship with nature, continuing a rich legacy of American painting inspired by Symbolist, Expressionist, and Transcendentalist traditions.
Art In Embassies Catalog, US Embassy, Mongolia
Established in 1963, the U.S. Department of State’s office of Art in Embassies (AIE) plays a vital role in our nation’s public diplomacy through a culturally expansive mission, creating temporary and permanent exhibitions, artist programming, and publications. The Museum of Modern Art first envisioned this global visual arts program and President John F. Kennedy formalized it. Now with over 200 venues, AIE curates temporary and permanent exhibitions for the representational spaces of all U.S. chanceries, consulates, and embassy residences worldwide, selecting and commissioning contemporary art from the U.S.
“Artist Suzanne Unrein’s Paintings Share An Experience, Not a Story,” In AWT Magazine
Suzanne Unrein’s references to mythology, art history, and personal experiences are reduced to instinct and good form. Her pursuit is almost purely about vivifying the evocative and those intentions are always clear. “It’s about shedding inhibitions and sharing an experience, not a story.”
I met Suzanne Unrein during a residency at Painting Space 122 in 2018. As a new artist in residence there, I quickly made the acquaintance of Unrein in the hallway and organized studio visits. I’m often surprised by how different people are from their artwork. However, Unrein and her work are undeniably striking, confident, and expressive.
“Suzanne Unrein: Animal Dreams” in Delicious Line Magazine
Reviewed by Elizabeth Johnson
Suzanne Unrein dreamed of succumbing to wild animals. She accepted her fate in the jaws of an alligator and a lion.
Her paintings stage trans-species drama in a fever-dream jungle, contrasting patches of deep shadow with random sunlight. She renders people and creatures with bold, gestural lines that reveal or elide details. Fragments of branches, faces, arms, legs, wings, and paws recombine in a riot of abstract pattern. The paintings evoke the danger and the rarity of heightened awareness of wild animals, yet preserve their perennial separateness and innocence.
“Unrein Slips Into Art and Fantasy at Sara Nightingale,” in The Sag Harbor Express
Suzanne Unrein has been in the mouth of an alligator. She has hovered with a koala bear and has been pinned by a lion - peacefully inching toward the edge of violence.
She has traveled to Borneo seeking orangutans and, one time in Bali, a pair of macaque monkeys used her as a judge gym, peering into her eyes to remind her that they are connected. These encounters - some imagined, others inexplicably real - feel the same as when she is painting, she said.
Each encounter has contributed to her vibrant worlds, on view in “Slip,” at Sara Nightingale Gallery.
“Suzanne Unrein” INterview with Radio Gabriel
Harlem-based artist Suzanne Unrein is known for creating breathtaking, vivid environments where the animality of humans interacts with lions, monkeys, hyenas, birds, and dogs – a world of beasts colliding in imagination and in bold, gestural brush strokes. Essentially uninterested in narrative, and inspired by the Baroque and Rococo “Old Masters” pushing the edge between representation and abstraction, Suzanne forms bonds and breaks connections, deconstructing and reinventing on canvas to reveal captivating, perhaps Edenic jungles with fierce rhythms, feverish dreams, and dramatic tension.
“Unrein Goes to the Movies,” The East Hampton Star
With their sweeping gestural brushstrokes and vibrant yet subdued coloring, Suzanne Unrein’s painting are ripe for interpretation. And interpretation is what they receive in a short file called “Hands and Eyes,” which will be shown as part of the Scream Out Loud: Comedic Shorts category tomorrow and Sunday during the Hamptons International Film Festival.
The film is a humorous riff on what happens when a gasbag critic visits an artist in his studio. The actors in this single-scene short are Hampton Fancher and Richard Edson, but it is Ms. Unrein’s painting, the subject of their banter, that steal the show.
“Perception Organization in Visual Art,” The Oxford Handbook of Perceptual Organization
“Perception Organization in Visual Art,” The Oxford Handbook of Perceptual Organization, Oxford Library of Psychology, Edited by John Wagemans, p. 913-916.
“Painted Story,” Vogue Bambini Italy
“Painted Story,” Vogue Bambini Italy, Paintings by Suzanne Unrein, p 305-308
In the summer of 2009, Suzanne Unrein’s paintings and art studio were used by photographer, Alan Cresto, as inspiration for a photo shoot for Vogue Italia Bambini.
“A Pair of Exhibitions Are Genuinely Local,” Southhampton Press
For those who might be tempted to confuse the glitz and high-end glamor of this past weekend’s ArtHamptons fair with the legitimate art scene on the East End, the current exhibitions at Shelter Island’s Boltax Gallery and Mosquito Hawk Gallery offer a dramatic contrast in both tone and impact
Eschewing the pretense that exalts artwork as either a materialist statement or major investment opportunity, these galleries instead reflect genuine elements of the local art scene, wherein works are offered absent vulgar posturing or pretentious references to speculative economic importance.
“Suzanne Unrein at Galleri Urbane,” Arts and Culture Magazine
My trip to Galleri Urbane would have left me only marginally more surprised if I’d found burning bushes, stone tablets and proverbial honey from a rock. Loaded into one end of this unpretentious and welcoming gallery space is some of the most startling and grand work I’ve seen in years. I refer to Suzanne Unrein and her genius at swathing great wallops of paint on canvas with praiseworthy skill that invokes the great masters. Two canvases are sheer joy to behold and are thoroughly capable of single-handedly inveighing against the notion that Dallas is a backwater with little to offer in the way of massively attractive visual fare. Put another way: I would not have been surprised if I’d first discovered these paintings on the walls of The Modern in Fort Worth or The Menil Collection in Houston.
“Suzanne Unrein at Boltax.Gallery,” VOX Hamptons Magazine
Suzanne Unrein has traveled the world and worked for years in all mediums, She recently returned to New York and was a studio project recipient of Gallery Space 122 in the East Village. The paintings she is showing at boltax.gallery are a return to her roots, and arguably a reminder and re-examination of the roots of all artists.