Characterized by gestural mark-making and expansive swaths of vibrant, unnatural color, Unrein’s recent paintings explore a hybridized nature where animals and people are swept up in an urgent desire to exist, to flourish. The figures embody shifting psychological states that reflect the ambiguities and transient narratives of contemporary life. In the botanicals, the flower is reimagined as a hybrid symbol—part synthetic bloom, part Vanitas echo. Drawing visual inspiration from robotic flora and the emotive blooms of the 17th-century Dutch Golden Age, the works probe the complex entanglements of technology, mortality, and transformation while offering an optimistic vision of what it means to live, mutate, and connect in an increasingly hybridized existence.

Suzanne Unrein's work has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the U.S, including Rare Gallery (New York, NY), Heather James Fine Arts (Palm Desert, CA); Mitte Projects (New York, NY & Miami, FL), Galleri Urbane (Dallas, TX,) Boltax Gallery at the Next Art Fair (Chicago, IL,) the Sara Nightingale Gallery (Sag Harbor, NY) and Boltax Gallery (Shelter Island, NY.)

Recent exhibitions include, “Of Flesh & Bones,” curated by Elyse Goldberg at PS122 Gallery, New York, NY; “Risky Business” curated by Marie Thibeault and Max Presneill at the Torrance Art Museum, Torrance CA; “Suzanne Unrein: Undertow,” at Mosaic Artspace with a catalog and accompanying essay by Dan Cameron, LIC, NY; “Bodies, bodies, bodies: raffish vulnerability and profane ambivalence,” curated by Parker Daley Garcia at Pen + Brush, NY, NY; “Re-Wilding: JoAnne Carson & Suzanne Unrein” at the Sara Nightingale Gallery, Sag Harbor, NY, “Make Art Not War” at Pierogi Gallery, Brooklyn, NY and “Properties of Illusion in the Candy Store” at ArtPort Kingston, Kingston NY, curated by Laurie de Chiara.

Unrein is a 2025 residency recipient of the Sam & Adele Golden Foundation of the Arts, New Berlin, NY; 2023 grant recipient of the FST StudioProjects Fund, New York, NY and a 2023-2024 recipient of the studio program residency at Painting Space 122, New York, NY. Unrein’s work was spotlighted in The Oxford Handbook of Perceptual Organization (Oxford University Press) and the focus of the short film, Hands & Eyes, that premiered at the Hamptons International Film Festival. Her residencies and fellowships include the Studio Program at P.S. 122 in the East Village, the Jentel Foundation in Banner, WY, and the Can Serrat residency in Le Bruc, Barcelona, Spain. Unrein's work is in the public collections of Andromeda Advantage, Long Island City, NY; the Eileen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation, Jersey City, NJ; the U.S. Embassy, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia; Fish & Game, Hudson, NY and The Kevin Richardson Wildlife Sanctuary, Pretoria, South Africa. Unrein is a California native and a current New Yorker by way of Florida.