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Brief Press Clips

 

“Napoleon Brousseau has internalized the traveller’s fresh way of seeing and has produced urgent charcoal drawings of raw psychosexual power. Energized by the erotic sculpted reliefs at Indian temples, he has generated his own pantheon of hermaphrodites and cosmically united lovers-the leitmotif being the blurring of male/female/animal attributes.


Elsewhere the eroticism of self-pleasuring figures is short-circuited by their elongated Pinocchio noses. “It’s a formal device,” the artist explains. “It’s more about the humour that is inherent in every situation if you allow yourself to see it.”  Brousseau, for one, is not prepared to blink.
-“Drawing the Line” By Betty Ann Jordan, Where Toronto- Jan.  2000

 

 

 

“Napoleon Brousseau’s works in charcoal are gestural and expressionistic. There is eroticism and a sense of grotesque and absurd play. Brousseau ’s lavish work also contains a strong statement on space and structure. The space, this time, describes one’s personal space and the manifestations possible for the creative and playful being. 


Brousseau builds cyborg figures not confined by sex or anatomy. They expand and grow across the page, weirdly entangled within their own limbs, undergoing metamorphosis, their gazes often searching and curious, their stances confident and exuberant. Dynamic, fantastic, and loud.”
-Genometry, by Corinna Ghaznavi, dart international, Fall 2000

 

 

 

“Napoleon’s Fifis, gigantic, sexually self-referential figures, was born deep in the fleshpots of Adobe Photoshop. Big, blowsy and raw, the Fifi oil paintings were crudely magnificent.I found these endearingly indecent Rabelaisian figures, with the “porn- utopian exaggerations of their Pinocchio/phallic noses to be “archetypal presences of some hitherto unknown primal play,” 

 

“Keeping up with Napoleon Brousseau” by Gary Michael Dault, Canadian Art Magazine, winter 1999

“Brousseau {who sleeps under a steel pyramid} dreams the recurring flight patterns of a sphere housed inside a cube, both floating through space. These clean traceries of his unconscious mind make up the content of his drawings. The drawings are exceedingly handsome.”
“Artist spurns the gallery scene and sets up show in the restaurant” 
by Gary Michael Dault,
The Toronto Star, March 1975.

 

 


“If you stumble upon huge glowing white army ants swarming over the Cameron’s grungy façade, fear not. It’s a new installation by the exuberantly versatile Toronto filmmaker, performance artist and sculptor Napoleon Brousseau.”
John Bentley Mays,  1988

 

 

“Toronto based, but impressively peripatetic. Hearth Mandala Renewal, is a spring-solstice installation, a temple of consciousness involving four large hanging constructions.  Both directional and elemental the fireplaces are riotous concentrations of imagery painted, collected and collaged. They circle a large charcoal mandala that becomes the focal point of each viewer’s experience of these mystical hearths.”
Gallery Going by Gary Michael Dault, The Globe & Mail, Toronto 1999

 

 

 

“I would sincerely recommend you consider giving a few minutes of your time to this remarkable artist, Napoleon Brousseau. He is not only a gifted painter, he has some great ideas. The type of work he’s doing would not fit nearly so well on Madison Ave. as in the East Village, or I would seriously consider taking him on myself.”
-Bill Maynes, Director, Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer Ltd. NewYork. June 25, 1984

 

 

“Fastwurms creates overwhelming, anarchistic spaces. At its best, Fastwurms’ work displays a clarity of vision which approaches brilliance.”
Deidre Hanna, Now Magazine, Toronto, for Tombpossum, Wombblossom

 

 

The 242 Drawings at the Lake Galleries is filled with a multitude of hints and promises. The artist’s wild, wide-reaching creativity is appealing and leaves one wanting to see where he will go.”
“Drawing on the gaudy exterior of Indian mysticism” Art About, by Kate Taylor, The Globe and Mail, Sept. 6, 1991

 

“Napoleon’s hyper-Renaissance-like creativity shines through all of his works that are at once intriguing, thought-provoking, fresh, humorously charming, often shocking and hard to forget.”
Canadian Art Series: The Mantle Project at Chapters Bookstores, Toronto. Oct 1999

 

 

“Brousseau’s images are influenced by his dreams and communion with nature. Images found in Brousseau’s artwork include foxes, turtles, rabbits and skunks. The inclusion of these animals refers to the animal magnetism inherent in human nature, as do the hermaphroditic human/animal forms that characterize his more recent work.”
Napoleon Brousseau: suspending the inner critic in The Medium, 
Arts & Entertainment By Italo Abate, Nov.1997

 

 

“Loaded with love, lust and protruding parts. In a  manipulated photograph by Napoleon Brousseau, the sadness is human and real, as the bride’s beautiful white dress is stained bright red by the blood from the groom’s neck.”
At the Galleries: The National Post Newspaper, June 10, 2000

1 Motion Blur is an exuberant explosion of sky blues, green leaves, and yellow dapples of sunlight, all held together by white horizontal bands of paint-like Venetian blinds or like a staff of music on which Brousseau’s pastoral score is played out in one gigantic mural-sized print, which accumulated into its present form in about eight hours of paint application.”

“Making a good impression with prints” Visual Arts  by Gary Michael Dault, The Globe and Mail, Toronto July 24, 1999

 

“Say what you have to say and say, admonished D.H. Lawrence, and say it hot. That’s what Napoleon Brousseau has done in his raucous, belligerent, positively Rabelaisian exhibition of giclee prints on watercolour paper and large oils on canvas. Wild, woolly and alarmingly improper, Brousseau’s larger-than-life she-male rocks. In oils, Fifi can scarcely be contained, so fiercely do the flames of her passion burn. Cousin Fifi Inferno is hot painting in every sense of the word, and the great white Uncle Shim is one of the best paintings in town. 

-Gallery Going by Gary Michael Dault, The Fifinochio Chronicles at the Angell Gallery, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Jan. 30, 1999

 

 

 

“Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky have been spotted at 890 Queen Street West, or at least their images are there.  Two painted faces with long Pinocchio-like noses in a compromising sexual position dangle in the front window of the Angell Gallery. “…this is the boldest thing that’s hung in the window for a long time.” The piece is called Denial State, part of the Fifinochio Chronicles. Mr. Brousseau’s creations sprung out of his imagination and were done first, pixel-by-pixel, on a computer screen.The artist turned several of his cyber works into two-by-three metre oil paintings. He painted them while wearing 3-D glasses so that the images literally point right out at the viewer. Angell Gallery provides 3-D eyewear for visitors.”
These noses know tales of delight and deceit, by Mitchel Raphael, The National Post, Jan. 26, 1999


In 1985 Napoleon was one of the art directors at Area in Tribeca. 
Area, the club that Andy Warhol calls “the best designed” in Manhattan adopts a new “theme” every five weeks. “The medium that we’ve all come from is environmental,” says Eric Goode, {one of the club’s owners} film or photographic-visual. “We try to give people a chance to see a lot of little things-ideas that will stimulate interest in those kinds of people that we want and create an atmosphere and an environment that will set them off.” 
NY Dives, by Tom Dewe Mathews in Harpers & Queen Magazine, May 1985

Exhibition CV -  UPDATED 2018

 

 Solo Exhibitions

2015  "In The Black", Angell Gallery, Toronto, Ontario
2012  “Eidelons & Phantoms”, Robert Kananaj Gallery, Toronto
2010 “ Somebody Anybody”, DeLong Gallery, Toronto_
2009  "Nuit Blanche" Cameron Ant Invasion, Toronto 
2003  "Brewsoul", Angell Gallery, Toronto
2002  "The New Portraiture", Angell Gallery, Toronto 
2001  "The Getwell", Deleon White Gallery, Toronto
1999  "The Fifinochio Chronicles", Angell Gallery, Toronto 
1996  "Bivouac", Gallerie Pallinure, Marseilles, France_ 
1991  "Eye Drawn", Lake Gallery, Toronto
1990  "Honky Town", (Fastwurms), Purple Institution, Toronto 
           "Ground to Ground", (Fastwurms), Osaka 90, Japan 
           "Birch Hive", (Fastwurms), Skydome,Toronto
           "Massassauga Lily", (Fastwurms), First Financial Place, Toronto 
1988  “Arbor Vitae", (Fastwurms), Forest City Gallery, London ON
          "Vermi Velocity", (Fastwurms), Canadian Cultural Centre, Rome, Italy 
          "Sheet Rock Xoanna", (Fastwurms),_ Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
1987  "Stink Bug Lodge", Bond Gallery, New York
1986  "Chew or Die", (Fastwurms), Ydessa Gallery, Toronto
           "Birch Girl Plaza", (Fastwurms), Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff, Alberta   
           "Tombpossum Wombblossom", (Fastwurms), ARC, Toronto
1985  "Know By Heart Lodge", (Fastwurms), Ydessa Gallery, Toronto 
1984  "Snow She Bones", Ydessa Gallery, Toronto
1983  "Be My Magnet", The Funnel Film Gallery, Toronto
1981  "Fish Hooks To You", (Fastwurms),_ The Funnel Film Gallery, Toronto
1980  "Universal Colour Systems", (Fastwurms),_ Splash Gallery,   Ottawa 
1978  "Anonymous Artists Army", Feldman Gallery, Ottawa
1976  "Voyeur Vortex", Gallery 76, Toronto
1975  "Decade Control", Gallery 76, Toronto
1974  "Suspended Steel", Gallery 76, Toronto

 


Group Exhibitions

2023 The Art Shack Experience, Durharm Festival of Fringe Film, Durharm  2016  Form Follows Fiction, U of T Justin Barnicke Gallery, Toronto 

2015 Spring, Robert Kananaj Gallery, Toronto, Ontario
2014  Simmulators II, Angell Gallery, Toronto, Onatrio
2013  Paper Trails, Angell Gallery, Toronto Canada
2012  SEED, The Tree Project, The McMichael Gallery, Kleinberg 
2011  “This is Paradise”, MOCCA, Toronto, Canada
2010  SEED, Olympic Winter Games, Whistler, B.C. Canada
          SEED, Culture Days, Ontario Science Centre, Toronto, Canada 
2009  Ten Ant Renewal, Nuit Blanche, Toronto
2008  SEED, Urban Screens, Melbourne Australia
          SEED, International New Media Festival, Hubei, China 
2007, "New Aquisitions", Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Alberta
          Crowd Conscious", Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston
          SEED, One Ton Tree, New Hope Baptist Church, New Orleans, USA 
2006  "Deluxe Mix", DeLong Gallery, Toronto
2005   SEED, SCOPE Art Fair, New York 
           SEED, Interactive 05, Toronto
          "Luminous Memory", Deleon White Gallery, Toronto 
          "Low Hanging Fruit", Emmersive Gallery, Toronto
2004  "Deluxe Mix", DeLong Gallery,Toronto 
2003  "Standards", DeLong Gallery, Toronto
2002  "Biophilia", State Legislature of New Mexico, Santa Fe 
          "One Touch of Nature", Gallery 96, Stratford, ON
2001  "Genometry, with David Bolduc, Angell Gallery, Toronto 
          "Loaded", Angell Gallery, Toronto
2000  "Approach", Archive Inc. Gallery, Toronto
          "Hearth Mandala ",  with Nils Udo @ Deleon White Gallery, Toronto 
1999   Cold City Invitational, Cold City Gallery, Toronto
1995  "Invitational", Cold City Gallery, Toronto
1991  "Team Spirit", (Fastwurms), Spirit Square Art Centre, Charlotte, N.C.
          "Team Spirit", (Fastwurms), Art Museum of Florida, Miami
           "Team Spirit", (Fastwurms), Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC_ 
1990  "Word Jungle", A B C No Rio, New York
          "Salvage Paradigm", (Fastwurms), YYZ Gallery, Toronto 
          "Birch Hive Edition", (Fastwurms), Open Studio, Toronto
1989  "Bee Still", (Fastwurms), Grace Hopper Gallery, Toronto
          "Ugh 89", (Fastwurms), C.I.A.C., Montreal 
1988  "Sea to Sea", The Powerplant Gallery, Toronto
          "Belief Structures", (Fastwurms), Mercer Union Gallery, Toronto 
          "Theatre Tableau", (Fastwurms),_ Winnipeg Art Gallery, Manitoba
1986 "Eratici Percossi", (Fastwurms), Acireal, Sicily 
          "Polyphonic", (Fastwurms), Genezanno, Italy
          "Casual Casual Art Exchange", (Fastwurms), Paris, France 
1982  "Chromaliving", (Fastwurms), Chromozone, Toronto 
1981  "Command Drawn", YYZ Gallery, Toronto


Selected Collections

 

Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston,
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa 
Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, C
Canada Council Art Bank
Vancouver Art Gallery, BC
Winnipeg Art Gallery, Manitoba 
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
Athabasca University, Edmonton, Alberta 
Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Alberta 

Private Collections

Low+Hanging+Fruit
Genometry
UpDown+Decade+Control
Birch+Hive
SEED+Scope+nyc05
Biophilia
Brewsoul
birchgirlplaza
Canadian Art Mag. 1990
Birch+Girl+Plaza1
eidolons
Suspended+Steel
Nec+Ung+Deo
Hearth+Mandalla
Comand+Drawn
artwithheart
Canadian Art Mag. 1999
teamspirit
Ground+to+Ground
Jungle
perpective88
vermiveloci
Marseilled
eraticipercosi
HonkyTown
groundtoground
theatretableau
Know+By+Heart+Lodge
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