Denis Rousseau holds a degree in visual arts from the University of Ottawa (1974) and began his career as a sculptor in the late seventies, taking part in Forum 76, an important exhibition held at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. While pursuing sculpture, he also became involved in the management of galleries, served on juries for the Canada Council for the Arts and taught at the École des arts visuels et médiatiques of the Université du Québec à Montréal (1991-2012). His work has frequently been exhibited in Quebec, Ontario and France, and has drawn considerable attention from art critics. Rousseau’s sculptures seem playful at first glance and occasionally integrate photography and video; addressing the themes of birth, death, religion, sexuality and sacredness, their strange forms, whether placed on the ground or displayed on the wall, evoke rather than describe the subject at hand and converse in the space like agents in a theatre of the absurd.
SEE:
« Under a Plaster Heaven : The Art of Denis Rousseau » by Jack Ruttan, ESPACE #20, p. 30.
« Quand la mémoire tremble : Les sculptures de Bernard Rousseau » by Nycole Paquin, ESPACE #27, p. 29.
« Trois sculpteurs atypiques » by Gilles Daigneault, ESPACE #63, p. 33.
« Oeuvre », ESPACE #75, p. 12.
« Sculpture and Its Double » by Jean-Michel Ross, ESPACE #75, p. 15.
« Denis Rousseau. To be… or not to be » by René Viau, ESPACE #91, p. 36.
« Denis Rousseau : de l’infiniment petit, de l’infiniment grand » by Serge Fisette, ESPACE #105, p. 27.