Bertrand Dezoteux

Critical text

The animated films of Bertrand Dezoteux (b. 1982, Bayonne) are driven by the grotesque fable of the digital age. The artist sets out to develop a deliberately iconoclastic aesthetic of the synthetic image, while paying close attention to the sense of detail. He stages the digital life of strange psychedelic personalities that seem to be survivors from our first hard disks, and evolve in an automatic way. Dezoteux is a collector of digital artefacts who strives to explore the remnants of computer imagery and avatars to create a sort of “raw art” of the digital, utilizing collage, recycling and intentionally maladroit techniques of Computer-Generated Imagery. His latest CGI video, Endymion, takes its title from the saga by the science-fiction writer Dan Simmons, a favourite of the artist’s father. The video narrates the adventures of a trio composed of Mamilou (the avatar of Dezoteux’s grandmother, who provides the character’s voice) and Salvadam Dalire (an extravagant tribute to Dalí, to whom the artist’s father gives the voice), driving a flying DS together with their pet TxerriPunk (a wink at the film Txerri, 2011). In a facetious atmosphere, the three converse with convoluted gestures and formulate wild theories on the creation of the universe and the principles of equivalence, in a tone that is both comic and serious, like that of pataphysics.

Text by Lilou Vidal