What Makes Life Worth Living

Artists: Joani Tremblay (Montreal)
Opening: Thursday June 11, noon - 17:30pm
Exhibition: June 11, 2020 – July 24, 2020
📍: 1305 Pine Avenue West, Montreal

Flowing from the Consulate’s third room, the sharp, clean and invigorating smell of lemons gently plays at our senses, inviting us to momentarily remove ourselves from the turbulences that have marked Spring so far. For the past two years, the painter Joani Tremblay has been researching the patriarchal power structures within architecture, and looking into the according outcomes of its land policies. Since the pandemic, this research has been placed aside, prioritizing a desire to valorize hopefulness in the everyday by emphasizing the notion of pleasure and its purpose within our livelihood. Leaning less towards academically researched art, Tremblay’s recent series What Makes Life Worth Living brings ideas of vibrancy and the sensorial to the forefront.

Upon entering the room, lavish hues, ranging from cadmium yellow and orange to ultramarine blue and from zinc white to emerald green, radiate back to us. Tremblay’s sun filled peaches, plump lemons, verdant foliage, and spring flowers—peonies and irises blooming to their full glory—are offered by the painter like vitamins ready for absorption. The generosity of Tremblay’s constructed landscapes results from the artist’s process, to collage, layer, and slice in elements that are plucked from our vast library of images and folded into the intimate experience. Fanning in all directions, these elements derive from the anonymity of the Instagram post to the specificities of field research, and beyond. Tremblay’s practice brings to light the imaginative purpose of painting and takes liberty with all the medium has to offer: constructing impossible landscapes that become tangible as we enter them.

Biography

Joani Tremblay holds an MFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University (2017) and was the recipient of the Vladimir J. Elgart Graduate Scholarship and the Quebec Master Research Fellowship, FRQSC. Tremblay’s work has been shown in solo exhibitions notably in Stockholm (Pony Sugar), Tokyo (3331 Arts Chiyoda), Los Angeles (Kantor LA), Edmonton (Latitude 53), Toronto (Zalucky Contemporary) and in group exhibitions notably in New York (Asya Geisberg Gallery), Brooklyn (Interstate Projects), Los Angeles (00-LA), Romania (Bucharest Art Week), Denver (Dateline Gallery), Mexico City (Material Art Fair) and Montreal (Parisian Laundry). They have an upcoming solo exhibition at Harper’s Apartment in New York in 2021 and group exhibitions in 2020 at Marie-Laure Fleisch gallery in Brussels. They have participated in residencies in New York, Los Angeles, Berlin and Tokyo, and have upcoming residencies in 2021 at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York, as well as White Leaves Residency in New Mexico. Tremblay is the recipient of numerous grants, the most recent of which is The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation (2020). Their work appeared notably in ArtViewer, Maake Magazine, Daily Lazy, Gather Journal, Canadian Art, Art Observed and ArtFCity. They are represented in Canada by Zalucky Contemporary in Toronto.

Recent Press

Maake Magazine : “ Joani Tremblay” interviwed by Marcus Civin

The artist would like to thank The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation for its financial support in 2020-2021.