Thursday, February 19^th, 2004 Velan will present a solo exhibition by John TREMBLAY (Boston, Massachusetts, USA, 1966). The American artist presents three video works: Sunroof for Braunschweig (1997), Pain (1994) and Lamping (2004). This last two will be presented together with two paintings on canvas: Logo rainbow (2004), unpublished, and Runway II (1994-2004).
The paintings by John Tremblay can be defined ‘Pop-Op’, the artist has been conducting for years a particular research on the perceptive aspect of the artistic language, renewing the experiences of the Op Art of the Seventies in a more ironic dimension. Circles twisted and pulled as if they were made in rubber are displayed on the canvas in sequences and multiply themselves like billions of cells invading and animating optically the painted surface. Side by side with the works on canvas, the artist experiments the video language. In Sunroof for Braunschweig, Tremblay cuts the deck of a Volkswagen van until he gets to the creation a folding top. In Pain, the camera shoots a woman walking with high healed shoes on a canvas and by making holes in it creates a sort of an ironic Fontana. Lamping is a playful homage to Italy: the artists reads a newspaper sitting on a chair and assumes the most improbable and diverse positions (leaning on the back of the chair, the chair on the floor etc) quoting some images by Bruno Munari. John Tremblay was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1966, he exhibited in numerous private and public places, among which the Kunsthalle in Basel, FRAC Roitou-Charentes in Angoulème, France, Sandra Gering Gallery in New York, Paula Cooper Gallery in New York. In 2000 he took part to Art Basel and in 2001 to the Biennial in Tirana, he lives and works in Brooklyn (NY).