2023-10-18 14:35:42
Paintings perfectly aligned on a white wall. Around twenty small formats. From a distance, they look identical. Yet each pattern is unique. The artist projects “nascent trees” in an abstract manner, these fragile strands emerging from a cut in macadam or stony ground. Many end up…
Paintings perfectly aligned on a white wall. Around twenty small formats. From a distance, they look identical. Yet each pattern is unique. The artist projects “nascent trees” in an abstract manner, these fragile strands emerging from a cut in macadam or stony ground. Many end up mowed down or trampled by man. “If we had let them go to the end, no doubt they would have given real trees,” muses Zigor (real name Kepa Akixo).
As in the many abandoned villages of Navarre where, yielding to the call of the city, the inhabitants leave nature in their wake to reclaim its rights. “These stems grow at a phenomenal rate. In five or six years, they exploded houses and church altars. »
From painting to sculpture, the artist’s fascination with the “power of life” is inexhaustible. This pebble enclosed in a matrix of wood attests to this. Although thick, the envelope cracks. Like the shell breaking in spring under the effort of the seed on the threshold of a “fantastic adventure” in the chaos of the world. Almost suicidal given the risks of being carried away by water or birds.
From the mountain to the shore
“Two major themes recur repeatedly in his creation: nature and spirituality,” notes exhibition curator Pierre Brana regarding Zigor. Crosses carved in wood (maple, plane tree, oak) sculpted in bronze or drawn in walnut husk permeate his work. Just like the discoidal steles that populate Basque cemeteries.
The exhibition “The Mysteries of Intention” shows the versatility of the septuagenarian who does not just paint or sculpt. He folds, draws, photographs. Like these dark mountain landscapes (invariably from the Basque Country) flooded by an almost celestial ray of light. Chiaroscuro images often taken at dawn, “that moment which tells us: don’t be afraid, it’s all starting once more…” On the opposite side of the room, the sound of the shore echoes. The cliffs plunge steeply into the ocean foam. The slope of the rock continues underwater. Here a man walks alone on an isolated rock. There, a cormorant dries its wings in the wind before going fishing once more. “There is always a detail in his images that grabs the attention,” observes Pierre Brana.
Poems
In a tower, a more intimate part of the building, Zigor reveals his work on prayer, among the sisters of Belloc Abbey or the Bernardines convent in Anglet. Inhabited silence, material stripping, rituality, he understands through contact with them that praying “is not saying but doing”. Live your thoughts on a spiritual journey. A journey guided by faith, sometimes crossed by doubt.
Zigor consistently photographs in black and white. “I have trouble putting color on color. The kind of dramaturgy released by black and white suits my way of saying more. » He also writes. On the walls. Poems matured in Basque and translated into French. The form is compact, concise. “Because with a little, we should be able to say almost everything. »
Exhibition “The Mysteries of Intention” at Château Lescombes (Eysines) until December 30.
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