Sowat, a Franco-American artist based in Paris, offers an entirely new collection of works produced over the course of this year.

His close, long-standing partnership with Lek has always pervaded his own approach. This duo of keen travellers and site-specific artists create works like shows that animate the public sphere. Their adventures as a pair enrich their respective paths with sensitivity. Following a year at the Villa Medici (2015-2016), they returned to Paris as artists-in-residence at the Cité internationale des arts. The institute’s studio in Montmartre formed the backdrop where Sowat could enjoy that precious period afforded by residencies: an escape from onlookers who pass him by and sometimes scrutinise his works in public. A time for searching—putting everyday life on hold—and a phase for experiments in calligraphic drafts on canvas and paper.

In his studio, Sowat has therefore tackled certain aspects of his art more intimately, while further exploring calligraffiti, a discipline at the heart of his work. To do this he has used materials generally considered to belong to contradictory worlds: graffiti and fine arts. Sowat is a bridge-builder, his oeuvre a footbridge he has built between these two worlds.

Through time spent in his artist-in-residence studio, away from the world, Sowat has been able to refine his style. His art speaks a multifaceted language in a series of references: the tagging cherished by Sowat breathes life into shapes, curls, twists, spots and script directly inspired by a range of calligraphic aesthetics that widely adorn cityscapes: the cholo writing of Los Angeles (where some of his family lives), the Latin inscriptions in stone and marble found in Roman edifices, Arabic calligraphy the artist saw in Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, the lettering of the Hebrew alphabet he rediscovered while working in Tel Aviv, and Mandarin ideograms he closely observed during a stay in Hong Kong. Sowat’s painted writing mainly refers to world art in allusions ranging from ancient history to the micro-history of global cities like Los Angeles, with styles the artist recalls from his countless travels and makes his own. Each of his depictions is a version of a new alphabet forming phrases that transform. His art is therefore a celebration of signs, expressed in an orderly frenzy intended by an artist who has become a divine alchemist making light of his own technique: to his painting and artistic movements he has added water and other fluids, leaving them to react together to transform his patterns. In this way, he has let natural forces alter and transmute the phrasing of his works.