Ingrid Syage Tremblay
Lost in the forest
Of Quebec-Syrian origin, Ingrid Syage Tremblay holds a Master's degree in Sculpture & Extended Media from the University of Texas at Austin in the United States, for which she received the UT Graduate School Recruitment Fellowship and the Quebec Research Fund - Society and Culture. Her recent exhibitions have been presented at the Grand Palais Éphémère (Paris), Apexart (New York), CIRCA contemporary art (Montreal), Chiguer contemporary art (Quebec and Montreal), and the Agnes Etherington Art Center (Kingston). She has been an artist in residence at various places, including Est-Nord-Est (Saint-Jean-Port-Joli), the NARS Foundation (New York), the Carving Studio and Sculpture Center (Vermont), and Djerassi (California). A recipient of the prestigious VCUarts Fountainhead Fellowship in Sculpture, the artist lives and works in Montreal.
The artist thanks the Canada Council for the Arts for their support of the project, as well as Nicolas Bel, Aldéric Saint-Georges, Marcela Borquez, Richard Caron, Martin Schop, Anne-Renée Hotte, Vincent Lussier, Aurélie Dubois, Philippe Caron-Lefebvre, Marthe Carrier, and Joannie Boulais for their help and support.
Galerie B-312 presents, in its large room Hall, the new corpus of Ingrid Syage Tremblay, the majority of whose sculptures are created by direct carving on wood. Initially aiming to use this traditional technique in the field of current art research, she creates a parallel with textile art. By digging into the wood, she deconstructs its internal forces and reorganizes them, evoking the structure of textile, formed by crisscrossing threads. The figures that emerge also resemble fiber: hammock, net, wickerwork, macramé. The voids allow light to pass through, and the material seems to become malleable like fabric. At first glance, it is difficult to grasp that all the links of "A Stranded Net" were sculpted from a single board, without any assembly. Elsewhere, the wood is so finely crafted that it resembles lace. The handmade aspect emphasizes the importance of gesture and highlights the sense of touch. The appearance of lightness and the weight of the material are closely linked; gravity cannot be denied when it comes to choices of presentation. Through the arrangement of space – fixed to the wall, placed on supports, self-supporting – a rhythm is established, and conversations whisper from one room to another. Two of them stand out, both aesthetically and conceptually. Bidimensional, the work "Four Mountains and Their Reflections" is made from paper pulp created with wood dust recovered from the process of making the other sculptures, while each of the sheets that make up "The Landscape at My Feet" has been sculpted from a model, in the manner of observational drawing. Created during a time of mourning, the artist aimed to convey the perception of reflection in the forest and the cycle of life with this piece. The titles are sometimes borrowed from works and expressions related to nature – "The Softness of Shadow" is the title of a book by Alain Corbin, and "The Timidity of the Treetops" represents the space that certain species of trees leave between their respective branches. While they can guide the reading, they mainly highlight the poetry of this work. To be discovered until October 26.
—Joannie Boulais
Of Quebec-Syrian origin, Ingrid Syage Tremblay holds a Master's degree in Sculpture & Extended Media from the University of Texas at Austin in the United States, for which she received the UT Graduate School Recruitment Fellowship and the Quebec Research Fund - Society and Culture. Her recent exhibitions have been presented at the Grand Palais Éphémère (Paris), Apexart (New York), CIRCA contemporary art (Montreal), Chiguer contemporary art (Quebec and Montreal), and the Agnes Etherington Art Center (Kingston). She has been an artist in residence at various places, including Est-Nord-Est (Saint-Jean-Port-Joli), the NARS Foundation (New York), the Carving Studio and Sculpture Center (Vermont), and Djerassi (California). A recipient of the prestigious VCUarts Fountainhead Fellowship in Sculpture, the artist lives and works in Montreal.
The artist thanks the Canada Council for the Arts for their support of the project, as well as Nicolas Bel, Aldéric Saint-Georges, Marcela Borquez, Richard Caron, Martin Schop, Anne-Renée Hotte, Vincent Lussier, Aurélie Dubois, Philippe Caron-Lefebvre, Marthe Carrier, and Joannie Boulais for their help and support.