Davide Bertocchi was born in the provincial suburbs of Modena, Italy in 1969. He recalls making his first ball-like sculptures out of asbestos from his father’s workshop when only 5 years old. Those sculptures no longer exist but round tautological forms have become a recurrent element in his work.
From 1988 through 1993, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna under Alberto Garutti. Garutti’s teaching had a major influence on the development of his future work. He concurrently also attended the University of Bologna's DAMS (Discipline Arte Musica e Spettacolo). From 1993 through 1994, he studied at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, in Utrecht, Holland and started to experiment with sound and music. In 1996, after a short period in New York and Los Angeles, he moved to Milan and lived in Via Fiuggi. He shared this basement converted into working and living space with many artist contemporaries: Diego Perrone, Giuseppe Gabellone, Debora Ligorio, Sara Ciraci, Simone Berti, Stefania Galegati, Ettore Favini and Lara Favaretto. Later, many considered this the starting point of a new dynamic artistic scene in Milan. During this period he worked as a gallery assistant to Massimo De Carlo, where he collaborated with many artists that would make an important impact on his later work. From 1998 through 2000, he lived in the Milan flat of Maurizio Cattelan, who also advised him to apply to an artist in residence program at the Ecole de Beaux Arts de Nantes, France, and that was directed by Robert Fleck, Stephanie Moisdon and Philippe Lepeut.
From that point to the present, he has lived and worked mainly in Paris. In 2000, he was chosen as one of the 10 Italian artists for the Studio Program at PS1-MoMa in New York. In 2002, he was an artist in residence at the National Contemporary Art Centre Villa Arson, Nice, France. From 2003 through 2004, he participated in the artist in residence program, “Le Pavillon”, at Palais De Tokyo, Paris.
Davide Bertocchi uses imagery culled from music and science and intentionally manipulates it by imposing unusual and intimate perspectives. His body of work ranges from video to sculpture to sound installations and mainly deals with pseudo-scientific phenomena, such as the dissipation of energy and the movement of information through its “support mechanisms” such as CDs, DVDs, records, and/or magnetic tapes, the orbital movements of planets and galaxies - this useless rotating revolutionary movement and its existential and enigmatic impact on everyday life. One of his most well known works, Spazio, an endless work in progress started in 1999, depicts an infinite number of images of planets or galaxies completely invented by him, but that can indeed exhist as our knowledge of the universe is still very limited.
His work has been included in several publication and exhibitions.
Recent solo and group exhibitions include: 2009 - Exhaust, Pandora's Sound Box, Performa 09 at WhiteBox, New York; Petaflops (solo show) at N.O. Gallery, Milan; "divide" Bertocchi, (solo show) at Base - Progetti Per l'Arte, Florence; No(t)Music at Fort du Bruissin (Focus -10th Lyon Biennale), Lyon; 2008 - Focus on Contemporary Italian Art at MAMbo, Bologna; 2007 - La Tentation de l'Espace at Espace Louis Vuitton, Paris; Promenade au Zoo, 9th Lyon Biennial of Contemporary Art, Lyon; Stardust ou la dernière frontière at MAC/VAL - Vitry-sur-Seine; 2006 - SintLukas Gallery, Brussels; 2005 - Radiodays, Exhibition On The Air at De Appel, Amsterdam; Top100 (solo show) at Palais de Tokyo, Paris; 2003 - solo show at Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Los Angeles; Prague Biennale 1, Prague; One Planet Under A Groove at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
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