JOHN TREMBLAY
The Entire Movie/ Quickest Way to the Airport
MAIN GALLERY
16 SEPTEMBER - 16 OCTOBER 1999




Escape Route
1999
Acrylic on canvas
66 x 88 inches







Open Plan Living
1999
Acrylic on canvas
6 feet 8.5 inches x 38 feet







Timeline Tower
1999
Silkscreen on vacuum form
8 x 19.5 x 11 inches



Artist's Statement:

"Hopefully you will have enough time to stay until the end of the movie and still make it to the airport." How far into the future can you plan anyway? As a trafficker in ideas, it helps to have a flexible definition of the word 'plan'. In this show the "actors" are two paintings, and the actors have big egos. They can help construct new roadways to your destination or make you miss your plane entirely. One actor is called "Open Plan Living"; the other is known as "Escape Route". It is the intention of the actors to bring about an urban unplanning that will make life easier in the long run. This is, after all, a city, which cannot go the route of a Los Angelized sprawl. The actors attempt to predict the future. Predicting the future is not a waste of time. You do so by altering the present. Along the way you will change things. One painting helps you live, the other helps you escape your condition. Then they switch roles. On the floor between the paintings is a sculpture-like-object called a 'Float'. A Float is like an idea from a painting which goes to sit on the floor. This new Float is made up of stacked transparent trays, each one with a different image printed on it. When viewed together the levels form a confluence of information, making up a three-dimensional timeline. The timeline, which traces this century's greatest achievements and flawed political movements, is a new version of one made by Claude Levi Straus around 1968, so it makes predictions for the last 30 years. The surprising thing is that the predictions are not inaccurate. As it appeared on Straus's page the caption read "three dimensional time line"; now it is a bit more three-dimensional. This was done in order to achieve a closer understanding of the three-dimensionality of linear time as Straus intended. The information in the Float is suspended on what appear to be so many take-out food containers. Think of it as a century in take-out food. The proximity of the layers accelerates the perspective so we get to where we need to go that much faster. So if you have made it on time to catch your eight-hour flight you will be happy to know they will be showing a movie.