Emulators of a new series of animated paintings, the "Digit Bears" descend in direct line from the "Happy Bears" whose "Mini Collectors" constitute a founding repertoire in the initial work of Stéphane Gautier. Like a kind of heraldic inventory, the latter illustrate and decline in almost unlimited numbers the principle which consists for the artist in generating graphic spaces by summoning symbols against a backdrop of memories, fantasies, surprises, obsessions, desires, winks... As always, his custom-made bear holds the central place of icon halfway between totem and mascot, this time immersed in an artificial universe, a chimerical bit of moving images and projected in color. To see, the staggered sequences, but which follow each other, sometimes in tracking shot, sometimes in exploded view, some in low angle, others in crossfading, constitute the filmical basis of the “Digit Bears” now available in 60x45 cm format. Intuitive, inductive, their colors with necessarily virtual grain seem to obey a little more to the finger than to the eye! No doubt it is also that these one-minute micro-videos or mini-clips mark the digital transition between the analog and digital imagery of mainstream new media art and the Internet. By their cinematic agility, these short stories build in any case a kind of hyperlink between the more classic posture of the “Happy Bears” image showman and the more innovative one of the trainer. images of the “Digit Bears”, thereby introducing the perceptual mechanisms of a new style into the artist’s work. The fluidity of the computer process thus responds to the multiplicity of situations encountered through these first scenarios, which in summary manifest universal qualities, feelings specific to ordinary mortals but whose successive impressions leaf through, one would think, the pages of a book of hours being written, as well as fables carefully illuminated before our eyes. If they poetize as in funny dreams their traditional models of the "Happy Bears", the "Digit Bears" draw at the same time a new pictorial framework with Stéphane Gautier, suggesting for the artist that his colors and especially their continuous flow would be first in our mind and no longer in nature. At the heart of the device as a precious stone, the miniature bear again staged in the middle of the screen metabolizes, like a mysterious talisman, the electronic impulses and these millions of pixels diffused in their original plasma. À la croisée de l’art et de la technologie, voici donc que l’artiste programme dans son travail le prisme multimédia pour faire des formes et de la couleur l’occasion d’exposer sa propre simulation du monde, d’un monde en soi absolument spécifique. And this is only the beginning of his journey between shadows and rays of light... Original signed. Table: 60x46x5 cm. White wood frame, anti-reflection glass. Video duration 4.55 min. Collage on LED screen: teddy bear in aluminum and steel alloy, gold finish. Supplied with a certificate of authenticity. Music: Jealous Guy Typhoon and Keny Jammer. Led screen format: 21.5x12 cm, resolution: HD 720 (1280 x 720), 220v power supply. Consumption : < 20W. Electrical outlet: DC12V1A / 110~240V. Infrared remote control included.