Jean-Guillaume Mathiaut
THE LIFE OF TREES
Telluric, grounded, respectful. These may be the adjectives that better describe the work of French artist Jean-Guillaume Mathiaut, who has devoted himself to the creation of “landscape furniture”, attentive to the second life a piece of wood may want to live. His creativity has already enchanted Jay Z, Alain Ducasse or Tom Ford.
Wood is no ordinary material: wooden objects contain in them the life and the strength of the forest where they once grew. A pillar, a door, a statue are all reminders of the trunk that grew from the ground and was part of an ecosystem of living beings. For this reason, the beauty of wooden objects is a beauty that is the closest to being alive. Jean-Guillaume Mathiaut, French sculptor and designer, loves and respects the forest. Over the years, he has developed a quasi-symbiotic relationship with that of Fontainebleau, to the extent that he takes as raw material the wood that the forest offers.
The authenticity and uniqueness of his approach have attracted his studio people like Jay-Z, Tadao Ando, Steven Spielberg or Vincent Darré. “Hermès, Saint Laurent, LVMH and Bonpoint have ordered pieces that are very respectful of our forest. It is a first step for these major houses, and I’m the only one today to work in this way with a workshop in the heart of the forest. We remain vigilant because our approach is timeless and goes beyond fashion”.
Mathiaut’s work transports us to a forest that is, at the same time, real and imaginary, “a landscape with infinite poetry in its simplest form”, millenary and constantly renewed, like the cycle of life.
