French smear trial accused gives testimony on canvas

Scribbled notes from SMS messages, newspaper clippings and torn strips of bank documents form a greyish backdrop to the canvas while bold red letters scream out Wanted. Me.

The powerful work is part of an exhibition at a Paris gallery by journalist-turned-artist Denis Robert, who is in the dock alongside ex-Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin in France’s trial of the decade. Mr Robert and four others are charged with taking part in a vast plot hatched to smear President Nicolas Sarkozy with a fake list of influential people said to have taken bribes from an arms sale.

The art show features more than 70 paintings focusing on the so-called Clearstream affair that has been at the centre of Mr Robert’s life since he first published a book about the scandal in 2001.

Mr Robert uses names, words, scraps of paper from his notebooks and newspaper clippings to produce works that have a strong political message denouncing the world of high-flying international finance.

The exhibition opens with The Galactics, a display of 11 floor rags hanging from a string with the names Nick Leeson, Yusuo Hamanaka, Bernard Madoff and other fraudsters embroidered in gold thread. On a large black canvas, Mr Robert has written the names of hundreds of people and businesses connected to the Clearstream scandal with the inscription Love Story scrawled in red across the tableau.