Lek & Sowat

Lek was born in 1971 in Paris. He grew up a stone’s throw away from the mythical ‘Stalingrad’ wasteland, the Mecca of European graffiti in the 1980s. Lek is a member of Da Mental Vaporz, French Kiss, LCA, GNS, RAW, and 1984. Collaborating with the members of the LCA group, he spent the 1990s emancipating himself from the traditional canons of New York graffiti, infusing his work with Bauhaus influences, abstractions, and Futurism. As he gradually left the streets to work exclusively in abandoned industrial wastelands, Lek became one of the pioneers of what is now known as urban exploration, constantly travelling across the suburbs of Paris in search of new play grounds. In 2009, he co-wrote with YKO the book “Nothing but letters” (Editions Alternatives, 2009), a visual collection of 20 years of graphic experiments and urban installations, which had a tremendous impact on the graffiti scene then in full boom. He exhibited his work at the Grand Palais in 2006 and 2009. In 2014 and 2015, he collaborated with Agnès B and Kenzo to create clothes, and continued his solo and duo projects with Sowat.

Sowat was born in 1978 in Marseille from a French and American background. He began painting as a teenager, in the streets, wastelands and along the railroads in Marseille. Inspired by Cholo Writing and the work of Chaz Bojorquez, he wrote “La France d’en Bas” with Gris1 (Editions Alternatives, 2003), a book about the emergence of the graffiti culture in the south of France. A member of the Da Mental Vaporz group (Dran, Bom.k, …) he drew abstract calligraphy on monumental murals and exhibitions with his crew around the globe (Australia, Germany, England, Denmark…). Meanwhile, Sowat developed experimental video works that culminated with the films “Mausoleum” and “Tracks Direct”, performed alongside Lek.

The meeting of Lek & Sowat happened in 2010 at a collective exhibition organized by the Graffiti Art magazine at the Celal gallery. They shared a common taste for Urbex or Urban Exploration, the art of finding and creating things in abandoned places. Pushing the boundaries of traditional graffiti, their in situ experiments are a mix of video, architectural abstraction, installations and archeology, creating a modern form of urban land art. They were behind the ‘Mausoleum’ project, a wild artistic residency performed in an abandoned supermarket of 40,000 m2 in Aubervilliers where they invited over 40 artists for nearly a year. This project was kept secret until 2012, when the release of a book, a film and a collective exhibition were organized. At the invitation of Jean de Loisy, Lek & Sowat then invested the basement of the Palais de Tokyo for over a year with fifty other artists, initiating alongside curator Hugo Vitrani what became the “Lasco Project”. At the end of 2013, working this time with twenty other artists including Jacques Villeglé, they directed the “Tracés directs” film (see video below). Through this project, their work was the first to return to the permanent collection of the Centre Pompidou from artists from the graffiti movement. They also participated in the Tour Paris 13 project, and worked on the Bains Douches project. Since then, they have regularly kept collaborating on many other projects in France and abroad.