Chronicles of a Scoundrel

Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix

26 November - 25 February

The third solo show of Zeghidour, an emerging artist hailing from France, pushes even further his deeply seated Romanticism and peculiar take of contemporary Paris that has its roots in decaying, crumbling beauty of the past that he often describes as ‘nostalgia’. Zeghidour is fascinated by the vagabondism, nomad and habitants of passage of this grand city, who leave their traces by engraving signs and symbols on the walls and monuments. In the current exhibition, it is incarnated by a nameless ragman- a scoundrel- who picks up anything that is on the street to make living – a crystallisation of the artist’s inspiration and his alter-ego.

The present and past are conjured up, as is real and imaginary; for example almost authentic Roman bust or statue of the Virgin which Zeghidour created from scratch without any references or models, belong to the imaginary world of the scoundrel- to the cathedral of Notre Dame de Misery.
Similarly, classic looking heads are clad with latex vestes, complete with vivid coloured images and kinds of scriptures.

The layers of meanings are multiple, and so should be the ways of reading.
One thing that is certain, is that Zeghidour has demonstrated us that contemporary art and culture do not exist in vacuum but they are deeply rooted in the past collective experience and what we understand of them in our own language.
And in his practice, strong emotion links these two chronologically separate worlds, and it is the emotion that sweep throughout the exhibition.