De
Julio-Paquin, 2006
Turgeon,
2004
Grande, 1998
De
Julio-Paquin, 1998
Gélinas,
1987
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DIANE
TREMBLAY: THE MALLEABILITY OF MEMORY BY JOHN K. GRANDE
There are allusions to a collective cultural memory in the artifacts
and elements Diane Tremblay reworks, colours, weaves and constructs.
These labour intensive artworks fuse the appropriated object and
textile and manufactured materials (all of which derive from nature) to
create strange, hybrid forms. The use of textiles predominates
inTremblay's art and is a natural evolution from the earlier paintings
and three-dimensional constructions seen in earlier shows such as the
impressive Femmes Forces contemporary womens' art show held at the
Musée du Québec in 1987. Unlike the Arte Povera artists in Italy, who
like wise appropriated materials and juxtaposed objects to make social
statements, Tremblay alludes to the threatened nature of the human
identity and persona, even of culture in general, in contemporary
society. It is the intertwining of human culture and the culture of
nature, (read in the subtext reframing of the language of material
production) in Tremblay's art that builds an aura of mystery into her
work. The biomorphic, organic growth forms she creates also allude to
our origins in nature and continued dependence on her ressources,
despite the erasure of memory and identity that accompanies the
exhausting cycle of production, manufacture and image motifs in today's
consumer culture.
When "manufactured" objects and elements, many of which already have a
formal history as clothing, household objects, etc. are reworked into
wall mounted sculptures and installation works a strange kind of
alliteration takes place. The object is rephrased, causing us to
reinterpret our formal reading of the artwork. This explains the
unusual hybridity of Tremblay's art. We are familiar with and
understand the purpose, history and character of the materials Tremblay
reworks, but transformed as they are into ontological enigmas they
raise questions about personal identity in expression. The language of
manufacture and production, and high technology has raised the profile
of imagery to the detriment of real tactile experience of the world
aroud us.
We see her building an open struture out of plywood recuperated from a
cottage in the Saguenay region of Québec. Once a functional structural
material, it has been discarded. It now becomes an open "wall", with
one side painted a rose colour meeting another pale blue one. Allusions
here are to the yin-yang duality, the male and female, in each of us.
An elliptical egg made out of Tremblay's own clothes and bound up with
string stands in front, an enigmatic and powerful symbol of the cycle
of life, of birth, gestation and life. Made out of discarded clothes,
once the portable armour worn on our bodies, that is usually then
thrown out, this "egg" merges personal allegory with the formal
structural social history of the walls behind it. Both are discarded
and recuperated and reformed to be given a new meaning.
The irony inherent to taking something that once had a use or function
and then reforming it to look like natural form(s) is intentional. In
Méduse, for example, a jellyfish has been constructed out of the cloth,
recycled carpet and rope. Manufactured materials are used to represent
a biomorphic form in three dimensions.
In Mémoire, where Tremblay has affixed hundreds of tiny paper squares,
hand coloured with ink, to create a stained glass effect over the
abandoned metal armature of a couch, the labour intensive aspect of
Tremblay's craftwork is almost ludicrous. The backside of Mémoire
likewise has a support structure woven into it made of old window
blinds. In a sense Tremblay deconstructs prefabricated materials and
refabricates them into allegories of contemporaneity, to the way our
memories and identities involve a kind of erasure that comes with the
endless production, replacement and displacement of objects, materials,
and people in today's consumer society. Tremblay plays on and with the
central ambiguity of the social persona, by presenting more than one
simultaneous meaning in endlessly reforming materials into art objects.
John K. Grande
Unpublished text
John
K. Grande, journalist and art critic, lives and works in Montréal since
1987. History of art graduate from the University of Toronto, he has
contributed to numerous art magazines: Artforum International, Vice
Versa, International Sculpture, Espace Sculpture, Vie des Arts and
Canadian Forum. In 1994, he received the Lison Dubreuil art critic
award (le prix Lison Dubreuil de la critique d'art) from Espace
Sculpture.
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