Mariane Tremblay

Mariane Tremblay’s practice is expressed in as many forms and paths as possible to reflect humans’ relationship with their environment, whether it be nature or the built environment, organic or relational. In her open and intuitive approach, Marianne leaves much room for discovery, coincidences, and fortuitous associations. The principle that guides her work is that of serendipity – the capacity to focus on the unexpected and make it a subject of research.

During her residency, Mariane developed a multidisciplinary corpus for her project Surgissements du noir by adopting a method emblematic of her general approach. She explored the notion of the black hole – attentive to its scientific aspects of course, but even more to its symbolism – through photography, collage, assemblage, and drawing. Each piece contained a find: an acorn-shaped weight from a cuckoo clock, a collection of four-leaf clovers, and other things encountered in nature. The works testified to the “principle that from darkness, all may appear,” [1] a concept rendered with ambiguous theatricality by interplays of light and dark and contrast between the hardness and fragility of the materials.

This ensemble was part of a large drawing featuring an enigmatic structure rising in the middle of an evergreen forest. Its architecture was inspired by that of an observatory whose line of sight seemed vast, extended, and imprecise. This piece wove a narrative among the works to create an ambience that projected us into the imaginary. That’s because Mariane was inviting us to much more than simply observing phenomena; she was summoning a stoppage of time in order to reach out to a re-enchantment of the world, which would be impossible if we didn’t try to welcome the unanticipated.

1. Taken from the introductory text for the exhibition Surgissements du noir, presented at Atoll art actuel in Victoriaville, September 6 to October 18, 2019 (our translation).