Justine Hill: Backdrops Julie Tremblay: Against Nature

Art-in-Buildings is pleased to announce two new exhibitions opening in the atrium and lobby of 125 Maiden Lane, featuring works by Justine Hill and Julie Tremblay.

Justine Hill’s exhibition Backdrops brings the artist’s most recent installation Standing (2019) and a selection of her series Heads (2018) to the lobby of 125 Maiden Lane. A painter that works primarily in shaped canvases she calls ‘cutouts,’ Hill’s work explores the visual and physical boundaries of the painted surface. The artist layers her shaped canvases with bold brushstrokes that at once emphasize and conceal their structure. In Standing, Hill pushes the surface of her painting even further into the realm of sculpture by pulling painted two-dimensional elements away from a canvas backdrop. Viewed from the front, the images flatten to create a landscape. From the side, they resemble a shallow theater set of an imaginary world. Informed by a ballet collaboration with choreographer Michelle Thompson Ulerich where Hill’s paintings were used as a moveable mis-en-scene for dancers, Hill began to consider the fluid nature of separating painted objects in space and creating physical depth in her work.

On the opposite side of the 125 Maiden Lane lobby is Hill’s earlier series, Heads. The artist describes these paintings as an attempt “to reclaim the white space behind her cutouts” by placing them on top of an unstretched canvas substrate. The resulting abstracted portraits are composed of two split layers, the headshot and the backdrop, which Hill seamlessly unifies through her intrepid application of color, effectively blending the inserted “heads” with their canvas frame. Pushing dimensionality even further, Hill’s installation at 125 Maiden Lane includes a custom printed wallpaper backdrop. Mirroring Standing’s conflation of the wall, the painting, and the foreground – this new installation of Heads equally considers all three elements. In Backdrops, Hill tests the realm of three dimensionality through a strictly two dimensional lens.

In Julie Tremblay’s exhibition Against Nature at 125 Maiden Lane, the artist presents and expands upon her installation Niche. Tremblay is known for her ethereal transformations of industrial materials into organic forms that are reminiscent of the patterns found at multiple scales throughout the universe – in plants, flowers, and nebulas. In Niche, the artist draws on the mathematical expression n+1, which articulates a process of adding incremental changes to a variable. Tremblay uses this expression to examine mutation as reflections on the patterns within chaotic structures. Tremblay aims to breathe life into the mesh material, creating a sense of a growing organism that interacts with and is organized by the molecular structures of the natural world. Niche is an imagined environment that invites the audience in, blurring boundaries and hard edges, and engaging with the atrium’s architecture. The title, Against Nature, considers the contemporary environmental crisis, and asks the viewer to reassess their relationship to the natural world. Tremblay’s work emphasizes the interconnectivity of all things, and articulates a common ground between seemingly disparate objects. At base, all things are formed from simple structures and patterns. Against Nature is a reminder that we should not fight this connection, but embrace it.

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Justine Hill was born in Tarrytown, NY in 1985. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received her MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and her BA from the College of the Holy Cross. Hill’s most recent exhibitions include Bookends at David B. Smith Gallery in Denver (2019), Freestanding at Denny Gallery (2018), and Movers and Shapers with Ali Silverstein at Victori + Mo in Brooklyn (2018). Her work has been featured in Art in America, Hyperallergic, New York Magazine, The Observer, Abstract Room, Westword, The Huffington Post, The Art Newspaper, Artsy, and Two Coats of Paint.

Julie Tremblay is from Quebec, Canada, and is currently based in Newburgh, NY. Tremblay has exhibited in group and solo exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the US, Canada, Europe, Mexico, and the UAE. Recent press includes feature articles in Madame Magazine in the UAE, Surface Magazine China, Creative Quarterly, and Nu-Modé Magazine, among others. In 2013, she was awarded a residency with the prestigious Parisian Galerie RX. Solo exhibitions include The Invisible Dog in Brooklyn, Galerie Zidoun-Bossuyt in Luxembourg, Galerie RX in Ivry-sur-Seine (France) and most recently at Ann Street Gallery in Newburgh, New York. She has completed two major commissions in Canada; one for the lobby of a new movie theater in Markham, Ontario and the other for La Maison Simons, in Gatineau, Quebec. Tremblay is represented by Zidoun-Bossuyt Gallery in Luxembourg.

For press inquiries contact: QUINN | TEI@quinn.pr | 212.868.1900

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Image on the left: Justine Hill, Standing, 2019. Acrylic, pastel, colored pencil, crayon and oil stick on canvas. 102.5 x 129.5 x 38 inches. Courtesy of Justine Hill and Denny Dimin Gallery.
Image on the right: Julie Tremblay, Niche, 2016. Painted aluminum mesh. Dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist.

Justine Hill: Backdrops and Julie Tremblay: Against Nature is curated by Tessa Ferreyros and Eliana Blechman and sponsored by the Time Equities Inc. (TEI) Art-in-Buildings. TEI is committed to enriching the experience of our properties through the Art-in-Buildings Program, an innovative approach that brings contemporary art by emerging and mid-career artists to non-traditional exhibition spaces in the interest of promoting artists, expanding the audience for art, and creating a more interesting environment for our building occupants, residents, and their guests.