November 8 – December 8, 2012
Opening Reception: Saturday November 10, 4 – 8 p.m.
ROBERT KANANAJ GALLERY
1267 Bloor St. W.
Toronto, ON, M6H 1N7
T: 416.289.8855
E: info@robertkananajgallery.com
www.robertkananajgallery.com
Hours: Tues–Sat 11–6 p.m.
NAPOLEON BROUSSEAU
Returning – Le Fantome de la Memoire
Portraits traditionally portray a subject. At the outset of this series I named my portraits Anybody, Somebody, Everybody first and then went looking for subjects I didn’t know in the process of my painting.
The Method Meditative Rolling, Reckless Grinding, Poetic Brushing
These paintings are created mainly through a random system of rotary painting. I hand cut the rollers to rotary print a repetitive pattern. This style of working, I call RGB- Roll, Grind, Brush. Repeat, until the subject revealed itself.
In a shamanic-like meditative process I simply keep rolling layers of paint using multiple colors at once until a face or scene emerges. At this point I seal the surface with epoxy. The next stage is searching for details using a grinder which is more random and chaotic. The roller sets a representational space in a forward and backward motion, the grinding accesses lost areas in a left to right reckless chaotic motion. It is alternatively static then chaotic, a particle then a wave. The subjects themselves can be elusive shape shifters. Searching for the subject in the painting can take a long time, such as Lady RGB which took over three years to complete.
Le Fantome De La Memoire
The paintings portray apparitions, chimeras, real fragments from the imaginal realms; waking dreams, spectre’s, phantasms, nebulous recollections, ghost portraits dancing between dimensions and meanings. In a world of hyper real imagery, they are the world view of people with facial blindness. They are portraits of eidolons- spirit images of living persons. The titles simply set a mood too begin the search for the subject. The works are titled with a subtitle that gives you an insight into what motivated the meditative rolling search.
Napoleon Brousseau