SENSING NATURE - Key Persons
Spanish artist Irene Grau (* 1986 in Valencia) lives and works in Santiago de Compostela. In her work, Grau is primarily concerned with color to change space and its perception. Indeed, the close analysis of a place and its transformation through color is almost omnipresent in her work - an approach that places her in the tradition of radical monochrome painting, mural painting, the performative process, and landscape perception - the latter in its broadest sense. The title of her doctoral thesis, The Painter on the Road, perfectly sums up her interest and attitude towards the medium of painting. Thus, Graus can undoubtedly be described as a conceptual plein airist who says that her work is "what remains" of a more extensive experience that goes far beyond the physically traveled landscape, an explored architectural structure, or cultural encounters. In 2010 she was awarded an Academic Excellence Scholarship, followed by a 2011-2015 FPU Fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, which enabled her to pursue her Ph.D. studies. In 2016, she received her Ph.D. in Fine Arts from the Polytechnic University of Valencia. Among other prizes and scholarships, Grau received the Premio Generaciones, one of the most prestigious prizes in Spain, which comes with an exhibition at La Casa Encendida in Madrid. In 2016, he was mentioned on the Forbes 30 under 30 lists in the Arts-Europe section. Most recently, her work has been shown at Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts (AEIVA), Birmingham, Bombon Projects, Barcelona, Centro Cultural de Espa a in Mexico City, Espacio Valverde, Fundaci n DIDAC, Santiago de Compostela, and Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA), Madison, Wisconsin. In 2022, she will have her next institutional solo exhibition at Appleton Square, Lisbon, Portugal.