PATRICK MIKHAIL GALLERY IN MONTRÉAL PRESENTS “AU LAC DES POSSIBLES” AN EXHIBITION OF NEW WORKS BY ÈVE K. TREMBLAY
AU LAC DES POSSIBLES
ÈVE K. TREMBLAY
MONTRÉAL
JANUARY 11 TO FEBRUARY 22, 2020
ARTIST RECEPTION:
SATURDAY, JANUARY 11, 2020
2 P.M. TO 6 P.M.
PATRICK MIKHAIL GALLERY in Montréal is pleased to present AU LAC DES POSSIBLES, an exhibition of new work by Quebec artist ÈVE K. TREMBLAY. The exhibition is the artist’s first solo presentation with the gallery.
Au Lac des Possibles brings together photographs on paper and fabric, as well as small porcelain sculptures in a modular aesthetic. The small porcelain sculptures created by hand were photographed during Tremblay’s winter walks on the shores of Lake Champlain in Plattsburgh, NY, very close to the borders of Quebec. The photographed porcelains were designed as her walking companions, small enough to be carried in her pockets or handbag.
Porcelains were arranged on natural assemblages of ice sculpted by the variations of temperature in the air and the water. Tremblay used her camera to paint with light bouncing on porcelains and ice in the frosty plein air. The angles create luminous surrealistic formations at the edge of a threatened landscape.
In this exhibition, the porcelains become part photographic traces of ephemeral Land Art, part curiosities in sculptural tableaux. The biomorphic lines of small sculptures punctuate images printed on fabric to create new geographies. In the gallery space, the works bounce silently onto each other in a meditative atmosphere. One can navigate freely around them and perhaps imagine better probabilities of space and time to be renewed in an instant.
Often photographic, Eve K. Tremblay's multidisciplinary works give way to contemplation and astonishment as well as to the fragmented forms of narration, memory, and consciousness. Greenhouses, gardens, laboratories, real or imaginary landscapes, allow encounters between often feminine figures and elements. Of late, pyrometric cones and small ceramic sculptures come together at the crossroads of personal narratives, fictions, and reinvented landscapes on the outskirts of towns, villages, and water bodies where she has lived. Installations in gallery spaces cultivate temporary symbiotic relationships and then disperse over time. The works bear witness to rituals and meditative spaces envisioned to decant the world.
Eve K. Tremblay is a photographer and multidisciplinary artist born near Val-David, in Les Laurentides. After studying literature at the Université de Montréal (1991-1992) and theater at Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater in New York (1994-1995), she obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with major in photography from Concordia University (1997-2000) in Montreal. She proposes a poetic and narrative approach on the border of the real and the imaginary mixing autobiographical, literary, and scientific references and metaphors. Since 2000, she has shared her time between Montreal, Berlin, New York, NJ, Val-David, and recently Plattsburgh, NY. Her works have been widely published and reviewed, notably in the New York Times, ArtForum, Border Crossings, Le Devoir, and exhibited at the MNBAQ, Bergen Kunsthall (NO), Kunstraum Kreuzberg (DE), Kunstverein Wolfsburg, MACM, LAU MAC, MACVAL, the Prague Biennial, The Momentum Nordic Biennial 7 (NO), Petach Tikva Museum of Art, UWAG, SAAG, Owens Art Gallery, and Leonard Bina Ellen Art Gallery. Her works are found, among others, in the collections of the MAC Montreal and the MNBAQ in Quebec City.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Pointe aux roches au Lac des Possibles brings together photographs on paper and fabric and small porcelain sculptures in a modular aesthetic.The small porcelain sculptures I created by hand were photographed between the firings during walks on the shores of Lake Champlain. Porcelain biscuits (bisqued) have been deposited on ice in temporary natural assemblages, sculpted by wind, waves, and temperature currents. Other small sculptures with colored glazes could feel the wriggling ice and become chameleons of imaginary beings under the suns refractions through the waters. Without digital manipulation, the angles point towards somewhat surrealistic horizons, evoking the last ice age of La Mer Champlain at the edge of a threatened landscape. Build by hand to be carried by hand, they were designed for pocket or bag transportation, to become photographic traces of ephemeral Land Art, as well as intriguing presences part of sculptural tableaux.
The images were photographed on the shores of Lake Champlain in Plattsburgh, NY, and Point at Rock State Park, New York, very close to the borders of Quebec and the state of NY. The grammar of Pointe aux Roches plays a double meaning: The geographical place, as well as the poetic action of pointing towards the rocks, are put into action in my project. The French language turned in the mouth and re-spelled, by the American language. I freely combine personal relationships with landscapes almost like a stream of consciousness, in which objects echo one another formally, expressing my own experience of crossing borders.
In the exhibition space, the works bounce silently onto each other in a meditative atmosphere. Sculptural tableaux, like islands of complex natural formations around which one can navigate, invite to contemplate improbable places. Several forms are inspired by readings about microbiology and earth complex systems. The biomorphic lines of small sculptures punctuate images printed on fabrics. Seen from above, their juxtaposition creates bird-like macro-geographies at the limits of reality.
Some images captured on the fly punctuate all the works to include in these geographies human silhouettes that move towards destinies whose authors, rather than humans, will probably be the elements of a terrestrial system that has been transformed and who will transform us in turn. My concerns about how humans treat the natural world as if they were independent of it inspire me to create works that evoke its ability to exist without humans. As this idea is not reassuring, I try to recompose with works inviting light.