Trained as an architect, Jean-Guillaume Mathiaut approaches wood at the liminal zone between art furniture and environmental sculpture. Within the seclusion of his Bourron-Marlotte studio, each work is hewn from fallen timber (century-old oaks, acacias, pines) chosen for its expressive force. Such an ethic of reclamation cannot be reduced to ecological conscience alone; it inscribes itself within a genuine ars combinatoria, where species, grain, and fissure are transfigured into vehicles of meaning.

Far from seeking mastery over matter, Mathiaut assumes the role of interpreter of its latent possibilities, renewing the intuition that the authentic artisan collaborates with the forces of the world rather than subdues them. Worked by hand to their final polish, his sculptures retain the scars of their vegetal ancestry—knots, striations, tannic patinas—while advancing toward an abstraction of volume that recalls the austere clarity of brutalist minimalism.