Sara A. Tremblay 24-27 July, 2013.
VERNISSAGE
Wednesday, July 24
17:00 to 21:00
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Sara A.Tremblay holds several degrees in photography, and is currently completing her MFA at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. Using photography, drawing, performance, video, and sculpture, Tremblay documents her personal experience of being places and seeing things through the traces and artifacts she collects. Originally from Charlevoix, a small region in the northeast of Quebec City, surrounded by mountains and the Saint Lawrence River, she now lives in Montreal, and works in a studio with a nice view on Mount Royal.
She gives herself challenges, and plays with the notion of the infinite and the impossible using simple ideas. She either succeeds or fails. Her work has been featured in several group and solo exhibitions in galleries around Quebec, Ontario and in Gothenburg (Sweden), where she spent half a year on an academic exchange program during her masters. The few Nordic regions she has visited, deeply inspired her, and marked a turn in her work. There, she started to surround herself with circles and spheres, a form and metaphor that is a current focus in her work. Originally from Charlevoix, a small region in the northeast of Quebec City, surrounded by mountains and the Saint Lawrence River, she now lives in Montreal, and works in a studio with a nice view on Mount Royal. This summer she is doing an artist residency at Visby Gotland, Sweden.
WORDS FROM THE ARTIST
Over the last couple of years, my work started changing, evolving, and I found myself reaching to new mediums. Photography was no longer the right way to express myself, it even became limiting; the camera felt like an unnecessary filter between the work and myself. It happened suddenly: I needed to be my own medium, be my own measuring unit. Simultaneously, I understood the real impact of my emotions on my work, and I started to use that as a tool. My work is now strongly influenced by my experiences in life, and my life is influenced by my work. While remaining deeply personal, the projects I create are abstract and open enough to leave the viewer space for interpretation.
My main mediums are drawing and performance, sculpture, video, photography and writing. They are all only pretexts to express many similar ideas, that all end up saying the same thing, no matter the medium. The studio is inherent to my practice now, as I need to experiment with many different ideas and mediums at the same time, and be able to go back to it, to continue works I’ve started the day before, in a cyclical way, just like the moons and tides.
Formally, my work is minimalist and reductive. The color of my photographs has been replaced by black, white and the tint of the raw materials I’m using (charcoal, clay and cement). The complex process of photography has been replaced by the simple transformation of material and surfaces. Charcoal goes from solid to powder. Cement goes from powder to solid. I leave a mark, a permanent trace or an ephemeral imprint by metamorphosing the form of objects.
THE SUMMER RESIDENCY AT GOTLAND TO EXHIBITION AT GOTLANDSGATAN
I want to use the duration of the summer residency on Gotland, Visby in a kind of live laboratory, in which I would pursue ongoing projects, and start new in situ projects. Drawing and sculpture are now part of my practice. My work is very systematic and often involves seemingly endless repetitions, beyond the limits of my own physical endurance. My recent projects focus on the notion of infinite and impossible, on failure and error, by addressing the idea of cosmos, constellations, planets and other spheres in a very poetic and abstract manner. I create works that are permanent and indestructible, or fragile and ephemeral, that speaks about my presence in a place, at a specific moment in time for a given period of time. I also have a highly reactive practice, which means I am inspired by the place I visit, where I live, and the people I meet. For four days my work and inspiration will travel from Gotland to Gotlandsgatan in Stockholm. See you there!
//Sara A.Tremblay