Jean-François Matteudi (aka Bériou)

Bériou is a pseudonym of Jean-François Matteudi, a French videographer and visual artist born in 1952. Some of his computer generated short films, produced by Canal+ and released in many countries, were widely broadcast in the 1990s. [source: Wikipedia]. “In the high Provence valleys of the back country behind Nice, a beriou is a net used to wrap bales of hay. It was also the nickname of one of my great-grandfathers, a smuggler, gold-digger and first class drunk. I can’t remember when, nor why I decided to use it as a nom de plume for my drawings, but it’s appropriate, as my art is filled with numerous net-like grids”.

ISEA1995

Bériou (AGAVE S.A. CAP) Beriou? He was a mountain guy who used to live in a lost valley in the Alps. He spent apart of his life digging for gold in a mine. One day he realized that the seam he was working on was just a mixture of copper and iron – “fools gold”. So, crafty as he was, he sold the mine to someone from the flatlands. But, careful as he is, he keeps on digging himself. Ever since then Beriou has been digging at the labyrinths of images and building rock piles in order to find himself.

Agave S.A. CAP/France Duration 11′