Director, creative director and artistic director, Benjamin Bardou was born in 1981 in a small town in Brittany. Perhaps this is where his fascination with cities comes from? Not for the quiet provincial town, but rather for the bustling capital, Paris, where he settled at the end of his painting studies.

It’s this shock of excess that Benjamin Bardou has been exploring since 2010. Having joined the special effects industry, where he specialized in the art of matte painting on feature films, commercials and music videos, he then began creating his own works.

These were influenced by the work of philosopher Walter Benjamin, filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard and the poetry of Charles Baudelaire. With a parallel interest in the theory of montage, these influences combine to create a powerful universe. A dreamlike, immersive landscape, these decomposed cities are full of cinematic references for those who wander there. Benjamin Bardou’s work requires a great deal of patience and hard work. He films with atypical equipment, then builds up his works point by point. In a play of shapes and light, characteristic of his work, the city or nature metamorphose into a fairy-tale effect of clouds.

A reverie on the border between city, film and video game, unanimously acclaimed by the critics.