Always interested in alternative materials — from salt and sugar to industrial metals — Julie Tremblay was searching for a way to apprehend a universal quality in her work upon getting her MFA at the Pratt Institute in 1997. At the time, her work was largely figurative. But when the artist began to experiment with thin sheets of tin-plated steel, she became fascinated by the abstract results this material yielded. “My fascination with that very material led me to want to learn more about geometry, and more specifically, I found out about fractal geometry, which literally changed the way I looked at at the world,” Tremblay told Hi-Fructose. “I started looking for repeating patterns everywhere I looked, big or small. And then I realised that this is where the universality I was looking for was.”
Today, Tremblay works largely with aluminum mesh, which she folds and sculpts into prismatic shapes that have a fabric-like easiness and sense of movement to them. Her hanging and standing (or more like reclining) sculptures are often illuminated and painted with soft, pastel shades, giving these metal sculptures a soft quality despite their industrial origins. Tremblay continues to be fascinated with geometry and reads up on physics, mathematics and quantum mechanics to inform the structures of her work. “I find that my way of working resembles more and more that of a scientist,” she added. “Researching, manipulating and investigating, alternating control and chance.” Take a look at some of her recent work below.
New sculptures in “The Edge of Chaos” at The Active Space in Brooklyn (2013)
Installation at Galerie Rx in Ivry-Sur-Seine, France (2013)
Inside Julie Tremblay’s studio in Ivry-Sur-Seine, France