Irene Grau’s methodology focuses on color as a transforming agent of space, and its perception. A meticulous analysis of an in situ intervention and its transformation through color is quasi-ubiquitous in her work - an approach in the tradition of radical monochromatic painting, as well as mural painting, performative process, and landscape - the latter in a broad sense. The title of her recent doctoral thesis, The Painter on the Road, perfectly sums up her interest and attitude toward the medium of painting, and Irene Grau’s process could perfectly be described as a conceptual plenairist, who states that her work is "what remains" of a wider experience, going far beyond the physically traveled landscape or an explored architectural structure. Solely transmitting an experience may well lack of concrete information, yet her work leaves enough clues to the viewer to allow access through process, intervention, and the document thereof, in order to visually and conceptually understand the artist’s modus operandi and artistic questioning and concerns.

In 2010 she was the recipient of an Academic Excellence Scholarship, followed by a 2011-2015 FPU Fellowship (Training program for Academic Staff) from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, allowing her to pursue her doctoral studies.

She received her PhD in Fine Arts from the Polytechnic University of Valencia in 2016.

Grau’s work has been shown nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions in Switzerland, Brazil, France, Portugal, Spain and the United States since 2008. Her work is in numerous private and institutional collections in Europe, Asia, and the US.

For her solo exhibition Lo que importaba estaba en la línea, no en el extremo (What mattered was on the line, not at the end), she won the Award for best exhibition project of the Off Festival PhotoEspaña'15 with Ponce+Robles gallery in Madrid, and she has recently been included on Forbes’ list of 30 artists under 30, the Forbes 30 under 30 list in Arts - Europe 2016.

Noteworthy national and international exhibitions include: El curso natural de las cosas at La Casa Encendida (2016); MAP / Manifestation d'Art Public #5 (Cerbère, Francia, 2015); -metría at the Centro de Arte de Alcobendas (Madrid, 2016); at Maus Contemporary (Birmingham, AL, US); Lo que importaba estaba en la línea, no en el extremo (2015) and Los ojos de las vacas, curated by David Barro, both at la Galería Ponce+Robles, (2014) in Madrid; Idolatria Va at Galeria Laura Marsiaj (Rio de Janeiro, 2013); In medias res at the Ducal Palace of Gandia (2013); and Mutatis mutandis at Galeria Moura Marsiaj (Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2012).

Grau's first US Museum exhibition is in 2018 at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in Madison, Wisconsin.