Denis Bernier

Denis Bernier (b. 1960, France) is a teacher and photographic artist. Bernier studied at Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués et des Métiers d’Arts and the Ecole multimédia des Gobelins in Paris and previously worked as a scriptwriter in TV, communication writer, web project manager and consultant before becoming a photographer. Since 2009, he has been exhibited and published in France, Denmark, Québec and Finland. Using photomontages, 3D and installations, Bernier’s work revolves around what is private and public, focusing on the Internet and the development of the spam phenomenon and hacking.

Spams

Spams was born out of Bernier’s interest in the content of some of the many spam emails that ended up in his mailbox. Composed of amazing text fragments, some containing extracts from the Mahabharata, others from Agatha Christie’s novels, the surreal mood of these crossovers appealed to him.

Seduced by the accidental poetry of spam, he undertook the task of giving them cohesion, providing a stage for their drama in the hope that the viewer continues the imminent action, according to their own wish. To faciliate this, he used the style of photographs of old movie theaters to create the imagery, embracing clichés and kitsch.

Spams is fed with both the artist’s own resources and other pictures. In this regard, he individually took it upon himself to reuse pictures from the Internet, transforming them to respect privacy. It seems logical that, since the origins of the projects comes from the Internet via spam, he has to dig across various Internet resources to achieve his sampling method. This series thus raises the question of public and private areas on the Internet.

Where Marshall McLuhan sketched the information highways of the global cybervillage, Benier is there to explore the sewers of the web.

http://www.denisbernier.com/