EN ATTENDANT MARS

La Station - Nice - France

From 11-08-2017 to 23-12-2017

Opening informations : Saturday, November 4, 2017, at 6PM

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A Bertrand Dezoteux exhibition

Opening on Saturday, November 4, 2017, at 6PM
Exhibition from Wednesday November 8, until Saturday December 23, 2017.

In partnership with L’ECLAT within MOVIMENTA, the Biennial of the moving image, with the support of La Villa Arson

En attendant Mars was inspired by a scientific experience known as « Mars 500″, that took place in Russia in 2010 and 2011: the simulation of an expedition to the red planet in order to study the psychological and physiological repercussions in real conditions (except regarding radiations and weightlessness). Thus, six men made this immobile journey, cut-off from the world during 520 days. The interior lay out of the Russian space station cabin were reconstructed in wood paneling, which gives the whole experience a strange sensation of a domestic life.

Bertrand Dezoteux gathered much information on this project, including by watching the videos that were made by the astronauts during the experience. With the help of the Laboratory Arts-Sciences of the Space Observatory (CNES), he went to the location where the experience occurred to meet some of its protagonists and film the spaces of the station.

In En attendant Mars, Bertrand Dezoteux restores Mars 500 in a film made with puppets and scale models patiently constructed in his studio. The film leads us into a universe stuffed with science-fiction films references while moving away from the clichés conveyed principally by NASA. Here, no sanitized, white and technological environment; on the contrary, the characters, animated with no dissimulation of the puppeteers, accomplish banal and contingent actions, bearing witness to the boredom triggered by the slow passing time of the experience led. This alternative spatial imaginary takes us to the complex expression of their feelings, as much as it forces us to transfer our emotions and our own fantasy in the elements of the environment.

Born in 1982, trained at Le Fresnoy – National Studio of Contemporary Arts, Bertrand Dezoteux developed his practice around new audio-visual forms. On the border of documentary, fiction and science-fiction, his films find inspiration from 3D modeling software to create hybrid visual objects. Presented in France and abroad, Bertrand Dezoteux’s work questions our relation to others, to work or the daily life, our imagination about the future and our desire for elsewhere. In 2017, the artist was presented at the Palais de Tokyo (Paris) and at the New-York Film Festival. In March 2018, he is programmed at the Théâtre des Amandiers (Nanterre); in April the Édouard Manet gallery (Gennevilliers) will organize him a personal exhibition.