Cyril Berthet: Geodes — The Hidden Treasures of Childhood

As children, we sometimes believe that the most ordinary things conceal extraordinary secrets.

A stone picked up along a path might contain a treasure. A simple object can become the beginning of an imaginary world.

For French sculptor Cyril Berthet, such memories are not merely fragments of the past. They can become the starting point for new forms of artistic exploration.

In Geodes, a series of sculptures presented at The Gallerist in Phnom Penh, Berthet revisits the wonder of childhood and the quiet relationship between imagination, nature, and the passage of time.

A sculptural journey inspired by nature

Born in 1974 in the Lyon region of France, Cyril Berthet has lived in Cambodia since 2019.

He began sculpting approximately twenty years ago, encouraged and guided by a friend. Over time, his artistic practice has developed around a profound connection with the natural world.

Nature influences not only his forms but also his choice of materials and the evolution of his artistic ideas.

His sculptures invite us to look more closely at shapes and textures that may otherwise escape our attention.

With Geodes, this curiosity takes a particularly personal direction.

The stone and the imagined treasure

The series begins with a childhood memory from the Dauphiné region of France.

Berthet recalls believing that a pebble might conceal a small treasure inside — perhaps a sweet or a piece of candy waiting to be discovered.

Of course, growing older eventually brought the realisation that no such treat was hidden within the stone.

But the memory remained.

And with it, something perhaps more valuable than the imagined treasure: the capacity to wonder.

In Geodes, the artist returns to this childhood belief, not to recreate it literally, but to explore what it means to carry such memories into adult life.

The stone becomes a meeting point between the child who imagined and the adult who remembers.

Making peace with time

The series is not simply an exercise in nostalgia.

In the artist's reflection accompanying the work, Geodes Procession represents the discovery of a new path — a way of making peace with time.

This idea gives the sculptures a quiet emotional depth.

Childhood cannot be recovered exactly as it was. Yet the feelings associated with it — curiosity, surprise, imagination, and the pleasure of discovery — need not disappear.

They may return in unexpected ways, transformed by experience.

Through sculpture, Berthet gives physical presence to something that is otherwise difficult to hold: the memory of believing that the world was full of hidden possibilities.

Sculptures without a fixed direction

An intriguing characteristic of Geodes is the freedom of their presentation.

The sculptures have no prescribed top or bottom, front or back. They can be turned, placed together, separated, or rearranged.

Each arrangement creates a different landscape.

This flexibility invites viewers to reconsider the relationship between a sculpture and the space around it.

Rather than insisting on one correct way of looking, the works encourage discovery from multiple perspectives.

A change in position becomes a change in experience.

In this sense, the sculptures echo the curiosity that inspired them: the willingness to turn an object over, examine it closely, and imagine what might be hidden inside.

Rediscovering a sense of wonder

Geodes reminds us that art does not always begin with grand ideas or dramatic events.

Sometimes, it begins with a small memory: a pebble held in a child's hand, a question without an answer, a treasure that never existed.

Through these sculptures, Cyril Berthet invites us to rediscover the value of looking at familiar things with fresh curiosity.

Perhaps the real treasure was never inside the stone.

Perhaps it was the imagination that allowed us to believe it might be there.

Discover Geodes by Cyril Berthet, on view at The Gallerist, 15–17 Street 240, Phnom Penh.

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