Rhodanie is a photographic series by Bertrand Stofleth (born in 1978, lives and works in Lyon). For 5 years he followed the course of the Rhône for more than 850km from its source, a glacier in the Valais Alps, to its mouths in the Mediterranean Sea. The artist sets up a dialogue between the riverside landscape and the frontier space that borders it, examining what is at play between the fantasy of a nature that is still wild and its profoundly domesticated character.
Bertrand Stofleth
Quartier Libre SIG, Pont de la Machine, Genève
www.sig-quartierlibre.ch
About him Michel Poivert writes: “Bertrand Stofleth highlights the kinds of occupation, diverse transformations and temporary developments, in such a way that the river loses none of its majesty and is in contrast seen attired with trivial things that divert it from the meanderings of the sublime.” Rhodanie is presented in collaboration with Services Industriels de Genève (SIG) in their “Quartier Libre” exhibition space on the Pont de la Machine which spans the Rhône itself. It is in line with one of the major themes espoused by the CPG, namely “documentary style” and observation of the landscape, following the example of exhibitions such as L’usage du paysage by Max Regenberg in 2014 or On the Edges of Paradise by Laurence Bonvin in 2008.
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After History of Art and Art of theatre studies in Lyon, Bertrand Stofleth graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie d’Arles in 2002. His artistic research focuses on the ways in which territories live and he questions landscapes in their uses and representation. In the Belvedere series (2001-2005), he works on writing a memory from a recomposed geography. The landscape photographic observatories conducted within the Monts d’Ardèche Regional Natural Par [...]
After History of Art and Art of theatre studies in Lyon, Bertrand Stofleth graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie d’Arles in 2002. His artistic research focuses on the ways in which territories live and he questions landscapes in their uses and representation. In the Belvedere series (2001-2005), he works on writing a memory from a recomposed geography. The landscape photographic observatories conducted within the Monts d’Ardèche Regional Natural Park since 2005 and in the Hérault valley since 2010 are an exploration over time of the transformations of the territory. Since 2011, this work on landscape change has been ongoing in urban areas as part of artistic residencies, such as in the Chambéry hospital centre and in the heart of large residential complexes in Bron. He continues his collaboration with photographer Geoffroy Mathieu, creating a landscape photographic observatory from the GR2013 peri-urban hiking trail. This project, called Used Landscapes, has received the support of the CNAP (Centre national des arts plastiques par la Commande publique photographique) and that of Marseille-Provence 2013, European Capital of Culture. With the Rhodanie work (2007-2014), he produced a documentary series which, through staging, constitutes an iconography of everyday life integrating the different uses and developments of a river.