Tristan Unrau's Solo Exhibition 'Hopes and Fears' at David Kordansky Gallery

Painter Tristan Unrau is presenting his first solo exhibition titled 'Hopes and Fears' at David Kordansky Gallery from March 19 to April 25, 2026. The show features works that deliberately avoid a consistent artistic style, instead appropriating elements from various sources including Willem de Kooning's brushwork, children's book illustrations, and details from Pieter Bruegel paintings. Unrau uses artificial intelligence to remix colors, compositions, and techniques from these references, generating hundreds of results from which he selects images to paint entirely by hand without assistants. Notable pieces include 'Marie' (2026), a photorealistic oil painting depicting a scene from Jean-Luc Godard's 1985 film 'Hail Mary' featuring actor Myriem Roussel; 'Surrender' (2025), which portrays the Empire State Building in a cartoonish style reminiscent of New Yorker illustrations; and 'Chorister' (2026), an adaptation of Félix Vallotton's 1885 self-portrait rendered with a smoothed, animated aesthetic. According to exhibition materials, Unrau focuses on exploring 'the energies of attraction or negation' in art. The artist's approach has been compared to poet Raymond Queneau's 1947 work 'Exercises in Style' in its exploration of disciplinary possibilities through technical mastery. Photographers Elon Schoenholz and Jeff McLane documented the artworks for the exhibition.