Mathieu Tremblin

Born in 1980 in Le Mans, France
Lives and Works in Strasbourg, France

Works

Spekulative Autonome Zone Lebensgroß (SAZ L)

Date

2026, in situ

Material

Stencils and coal dust

Description

For the 2026 Urban Art Biennale, Strasbourg-based artist Mathieu Tremblin has applied key messages from a role-playing game – which he co-developed – depicting the imagined state of the Völklinger Hütte in 2046, using washable charcoal on selected walls of the former coking plant. The intervention takes the form of a kind of life-size game set-up in which scale, fragment and narrative intertwine. In this way, the walls themselves become vessels for a possible future that oscillates between speculation, memory and reflection. Tremblin’s art can best be described as urban conceptualism: playful in form, analytical in approach and, not infrequently, with a distinct political edge. His works operate through shifts, condensations and repetitions, without sacrificing lightness or humour. It is precisely within this field of tension that a practice unfolds which reveals gaps, recodes situations and conceives of urban space as a conceivable, negotiable place.