In Some Kind of Nature, five life-size sculptures populate the gallery, somersaulting, back-flipping, balancing, prone and unravelling, suspended from the ceiling and resting on the floor. Julie Tremblay’s recent work pushes her investigation of the human form, which becomes a metaphor exploring existential themes of order and chaos, mortality and the universality of the human condition. In this work, she equally explores sculptural themes of mass, volume, density, equilibrium, dynamism, and positive/negative spaces. She takes inspiration and at times materials from her immediate surroundings. Tremblay explains, “I have been interested in the relationship between man and nature, [or] man and his environment. Here I am responding to the extreme nature of the manmade surroundings of my Bushwick studio, which [for me] have become some kind of nature. The works in this show address this sense of vernacular by way of the eclectic nature of the materials (all manmade).”
Working with sheets of salvaged industrial sheet metal and chicken wire, the pieces have a weightlessness that Tremblay emphasizes with sculptural gestures. In Red Handed, (2011, tin-plated steel, h30 x w19.5 x d25.75 in.) the figure is suspended in mid-air and captured in a back flip. Deliberately abstracted, the figure appears weightless, transcending the materiality of the metal. Her choice of materials has a unifying interstitial quality alluding to the cellular structures not only of the human body but also of the cosmos. Tremblay’s sculptures successfully communicate sophisticated emotion through their beauty and human scale: they inhabit our space as much as we inhabit theirs.
Born in Québec City, Canada, Julie Tremblay received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Université Laval, Quebec, and her Master’s of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute, New York. Since the late nineties Tremblay has participated in a number of solo and group exhibitions in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg and the United States. Most recently her work has been featured in solo shows at Galerie Zidoun (Luxembourg) and Galerie Lacerte Art Contemporain (Québec City and Montreal). She has also exhibited at Hendershot Gallery (New York City), Andipa Gallery (London, UK), Galleri Rebecca Kormind (Copenhagen, Denmark), and Craig Scott Gallery (Toronto, Canada). She was selected to be a part of a collaborative project Tire-toi une bûche that will be broadcast on the Canadian television show ‘Livraison d’Artistes’ this winter, and will be featured in an upcoming two-person exhibition at the Nassau County Museum. Her work can be found in private collections in Canada, Denmark, England, Germany, Turkey, and the United States. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.