Zigor

In 1983, he began sculpting and joined a community of contemporaries from the region. Zigor draws inspiration from his native environment, exploring thematics of naturalistic, organized chaos and interconnectedness through sculptures, photographs, paintings and poems.

• Name — Zigor • Birth Name — Kepa Akixo • Born — 1947 • Birthplace — Aretxabaleta (Spain) • Field — Sculpture; Poetry; Photography • Works — Biarritz • Website — https: www.zigor-art.com/

Kepa Akixo was born in 1947 and grew up in a mountain village in the province of Guipuzcoa, in the Southern Basque Country. Somewhat of a tearaway child and a recalcitrant student, at the age of eleven he joined the Catholic seminary boarding school in Saturraran where he discovered the ocean and biblical texts. Encountering the metaphysics and profundity of both the sea and sacred writings was a decisive factor in Zigor's development as an autodidact. At the age of 14, he worked as a fitter and turner, and excelled in the sport of Basque pelota. Reflexes conditioned as a labourer and pelotari were to have a significant impact on his artistic kinesics to come, with repeated momentum from the wall to the work. For several years, from the age of 16, Kepa Akixo became fully committed to political activism in the midst of the Franco dictatorship. In addition to spiritual texts, he wrote of resistance striving for a free Basque Country, both its entity and its language. It was during this period that he adopted his nom de plume Zigor, the Basque word for "whip", and laid bare the roots of organic poetry in which fragility is revealed at its most robust, whether in nature, form or humankind. It was in the early 1970s that Zigor published his first collections of poems in the Basque language, and he has been published every year since in two Basque reviews, Poesiaren hatsa and Maiatz. His poems, a cross between solitary strolls and haïkus, are now translated in French, Spanish and English. "I am the son of a language that made a people. Of a language that, in mulling over the world, shaped the landscape. I am the son of a language, and this language has given shape to song, dreams and silence. I shout it out so that it reaches you." (Excerpt from Zigor's Son of a Language.

Sketchbooks offer a window into an artist’s imagination, tracing the origins of their work. Sketches, outlines, and rough drawings capture the early murmurs of creation, fresh and vivid, like a feeling taking form. A few words, but not yet a sentence, that the exchange with substance will later reveal. "The sketch is a humble stone pointing the way between thought and hand." — Zigor, The sketch.

Painting (watercolour, chalk, oil, gouache, acrylic or walnut ink) is the same process that spills out of the sketchbook to take on all its magnitude, sometimes on canvases measuring 3m50, hoisted like imaginary fronton pelota walls.

In 1996, after meeting the art dealer Paul Haim, Zigor decided to begin working in bronze. He is cited as being fascinated with the particular play of light on the material."In some sculptures, light penetrates never to emerge. It stays inside as if absorbed by the dark hole of eternity. However, light penetrates other sculptures and, without traversing them, reappears transformed. And in some, light gushes out of the other side like water from a mountain."Zigor's monumental sculptures are represented in numerous collections in the Basque Country, Spain, Australia (Sydney), the United States (Washington and New York), Switzerland and Argentina. They stand in private gardens and public spaces, like the Urkulu fountain in Biarritz, witness to a rock's melancholy on seeing the wave recede. "The sculpture is not the structure in bronze but rather the water that sings inside it." – Zigor, Urkulu. From there, Zigor creates a totemic work representing an imagined rendition of the Basque Country. "The landscape that surrounds me has always moved me and accompanied me in my deeper understanding of the world. When I sculpt, paint, take photographs and write, I'm just trying to recount this feeling. In the creative act, my little sketchbooks are very often the source of most of my works. But the pieces themselves follow very mysterious paths connected not only to the medium and tool used but also my doubts and my courage. Especially courage, which is necessary in order to continue along the path dictated by what appears in front of me. Honouring mishaps is the cornerstone of the creative act. What a mistake it would be to believe that I could improve or solve the unsolvable. I don't know what the sculptures and paintings will be. It's only a perpetual attempt to keep alive the inspiration that galvanized me at the start."

In 1977, Zigor becomes a photojournalist for major news magazines and the Capa press agency. Shooting on a Leica, he travelled extensively until 1982, most notably in and around the Sahara desert. He recounts these experiences as having chronicled a shared fabric between land and language. This influenced his photographic point of view, relying on what gradually became an intuitive and increasingly artistically-minded approach to the medium. After a several year hiatus following his career as a photojournalist, he rekindled his relationship with photography in the 2010s as an artist. He opted primarily for black and white, believing colour to be a distraction.

It was in 1983, upon being commissioned to take a portrait of the sculptor Remigio Mendiburu, that Zigor ventured into his subject's workshop in Hondarribia. It was on this trip that he decided to devote himself to his artistic practice. He set up a workshop in Biarritz, associating with Basque Country sculptors such as Nestor Basterretxea, Eduardo Chillida, Jorge Oteiza.

Zigor's work explores several materials and elements in order to convey the same density: wood (oak, plane tree, chestnut and beech), bronze, steel. Happenstance seems to play a role in each work that expresses mass and movement, separation and fusion, fracture and regained balance. A struggle can be detected between volumes, gravity and space that, by ingenious innate order, end up by merging and falling back into place. Zigor's sculptures, witnesses to this "organized chaos", have no end. The lines seamlessly fuse and each angle of vision portrays a new piece that invites wind, water and light to pass through it. "The sculptor's work is to open up a pathway for the light." Zigor's sometimes gigantic constructions draws his source of inspiration from the drop of water that bends a blade of grass without snapping it, to the wings of birds that withstand all the winds that blow. Dimensions of spirituality and identity subtly occupy Zigor's work. "I sculpt like I pray", he says and this state of consciousness, embracing perception of beauty and hard-won freedom, also recounts a captive state of nothingness, convinced that poetry can perceptibly change the world. "In the shadow of sculptures hides darkness, And in darkness the shape of mystery, And in mystery all the shapes." - Zigor, In the shadow of sculptures

• 2021; Egu iturria, la source de l'aube, Espace muséal du Bellevue - Biarritz • 2019; Rendez-vous avec Zigor, Galerie Dehoux - Saint-Jean-de-Luz • 2018; Itzalean ikusi, voir dans l'ombre, Espace muséal du Bellevue - Biarritz • 2014; Le silence des formes, Musée de la Vallée de la Creuse - Eguzon-Chantôme • 2013; Le silence des formes, Galerie Maison Gérard - New York • 2012; Ibaiadar, Galerie Hegoa, Carré Rive Gauche - Paris • 2011; Du dessin à la sculpture, Galerie Arrêt sur l'image - Bordeaux • Zigor sculptures, Galerie Hegoa, Carré Rive Gauche - Paris • 2010; Formes nues, Base sous-marine - Bordeaux • 2009; Jardins jardin, Jardin des Tuileries - Paris • 2007; Art Paris, Grand Palais - Paris • 2006; Villa Beatrix Enea - Anglet • 2003; Maison de la Culture - Ostabat • 2002; Musée Basque et de l'Histoire de Bayonne - Bayonne • Espace Atlantica – Biarritz • Galeria Epelde & Mardaras - Bilbao • 2000; Espace muséal du Bellevue - Biarritz • 1994; Palais des Festivals - Biarritz • 1990; Musée Bonnat - Bayonne Zigor is represented by the Maison Gerard Gallery in New York

• 2021; Egu iturria, la source de l'aube, Espace muséal du Bellevue - Biarritz • 2019; Mendiak eta itsasoa, montagnes et mer, Galerie Hegoa - Paris • 2018; Itzaletik at, Médiathèque - Biarritz • 2015; Jardins dévoilés, Base Sous-Marine - Bordeaux • 2013; Zigor photographies, Galerie Hegoa, Carré Rive Gauche – Paris Zigor is represented by Galerie Hegoa in Paris

• 2021; Gurutze XI - Église Saint-Rémi, Bordeaux • 2020; Bikote VIII - New York, USA • Hega VII - Mont de Marsan, France • 2018; Dantza IV - Lahonce, France • Olerki XVIII - Guethary, France • 2017; Loturak VI - Echichens, Switzerland • 2016; Alea III - Washington, USA • 2015; Alea I - Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France • Olerki VII - Sydney, Australia • 2013; Gurutze III - Lahonce, France • 2012; Etxea - Urrugne, France • 2010; Lore - Pomerol, France et Mendoza, Argentine • 2008; Dantza - Guéthary, France • 1998; Bikote VIII – La Petite Escalère - Saint-Laurent-de-Gosse, France

• 2015; La fontaine Urkulu - Biarritz, France • 2011; Txoria - Anglet, France • Olerki VII - Biarritz, France • 2002; Eguskilore - Musée Basque et de l'Histoire de Bayonne - Bayonne, France • 2004; Olatua - Museo Maritimo – Bilbao, Spain • 1990; Bikote - Museo de Bellas Artes de Alava – Vitoria, Spain

• 2019; Exposition Mendiak eta itsasoa, Galerie Hegoa Paris artsinthecity • 2018; Itzalean ikusi, Boisakré Production • Exposition Itzalean Ikusi, TVPI • Zigor à Biarritz, Itzalean Ikusi, Maria Mangas • 2017; Portrait, Txirrita France 3 • 2017; Zalmaltzain, fresque éphémère, Olivier Péant • Fresque éphémère, Corrida Goyesque, TVPI • 2011; Zigor, sculpteur basque, un film de Caroline de Otero Boisakré Production • 2010; Le monde de Zigor, France 3.