Historic Grounds
Ghyslain Bertholon
"Rezilentia"
published at 04/03/2026
"Created out of a massive, burnt-looking sequoia tree stump, topped by a bronze and gold axe, the work Rezilientia [Resilience] presented at the Domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire is the most imposing variant Ghyslain Bertholon has ever produced in this series of stand-alone pieces begun in 2020.
This out-of-the-ordinary work is altogether consistent with thought the artist has been giving for the last twenty-five years to a question (…): that of the relationship of domination we maintain with nature de la relation de domination que nous entretenons avec la nature.
The notion of hybridisation is a recurrent term in contemporary practice and vocabulary. While hybridisation is one of the driving forces of Ghyslain Bertholon’s body of work, here, the ideas of contamination, ingestion, amalgamation and shifting seem to predominate: the wood “contaminates” the axe; the metal seems to have integrated into and amalgamated with the branch, become the support for a new life, more specifically, a resilience, drawing on the traces, the cinders, the irrefutable remains of a trauma in order to be born again and reinvent itself..
With his ever-critical eye on what we call the Anthropocene (…) Ghyslain Bertholon’s work outlines a reversal of power and suggests that, if we do not endeavour to know and respect its laws, nature always ends up taking its course (…).” Marie Deparis-Yafil, January 2026
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Ghyslain BERTHOLON
FRANCE
After higher studies in communication through images, Ghyslain Bertholon enrolled at the School of Fine Arts in Saint-Étienne, leaving four years later with a Higher National Degree in Visual Expression (DNSEP). When he left the school, he joined the Atelier de Conception Urbaine (Urban Design Workshop) a group of some fifteen artists, architects and designers devoted to “local” actions in the public space, under the aegis of the urban planner Jean-Stone Charbonneau. He continued with such artistic collaborations until 2004, creating or joining several artists’ collectives while fulfilling a number of public commissions for permanent installations in the public space.
In 2005, he decided to leave these collectives and write his own Poézie [Poetry], which reflect his thoughts on and sensory approach to what constitutes our natural, social and cultural environment. His Poézies [Poems], in various forms and scales, take over the public space and exhibition rooms alike and bear witness to his ecological sensibility through the study of the relationships of domination that human beings maintain over the rest of nature.
Over the last 20 years, since his first solo exhibition, Ghyslain Bertholon has taken part in several hundred solo and collective exhibitions as well as creative residencies and workshops in France and abroad.
Ghyslain Bertholon is represented by the Rabouan Moussion Gallery and the Olivier Castaing Gallery in Paris; the Maison Gallery in Libourne and Éric de Ville and Didier Brouwers (Art22 Gallery) in Belgium.