Josep Escarrant (JS40) absorbs the cultural and pictorial influences that surround him from an early age. During many travels he developed an assertive political conscience which he continues to sharpen to this day. After a detour to the Central Saint Martins School of Arts in London and a period of work in the film industry in France and the Caribbean, Josep Escarrant begins to produce works of Street art.

His practice then takes a form of Syncretic Art, a syncretism of collage, inspired by graffiti, Haitian vévés, forgotten Cuban pictograms, secret symbols and superstitions from around the world. Syncretism, a term originally religious and philosophical, is the synthesis of two or more cultural traits of different origins, giving rise to new cultural forms. Today we would speak of interbreeding, sampling, but this concept also finds an echo in the Appropriationist movement founded in New York by Sherrie Levine in 1977.

It is also a primitive way of seeing the world for the artist who practices a global and undifferentiated apprehension of the outside world by juxtaposition. JS40 inscribes his syncretic practice in the high tradition of a symbolic space that constantly feeds on reading and travel (geographical and imaginary). He thus creates new associations composed of elements of a different nature, even disparate, but they are on the plastic level treated with the same stylistic approach and great technical rigor.

Today we had the chance to meet the artist in his studio in the south of France.

Josep Escarrant what can you tell us about yourself?

Without going as far as Banksy in terms of anonymity, I do not wish to extend myself on my personal life and I’d rather have people concentrating on my work. I can tell you I am born in Mexico and I have travelled to many countries, this explaining the influences found in my work. I suppose I can also mention that although I am largely self-taught, I studied for a year in the Central Saint Martins School of Arts, which was a very positive experience. To conclude on this desire to remain partially anonymous, I will add that my last name, Escarrant, means bandit in Occitan and Catalan, and as you well know all true bandits work with a mask.

What is your work inspired from?

I mainly find inspiration in the symbols that have been created by humans across space and time in order to influence the world around them. I’m interested by the idea that images can have an incidence on reality, like the prehistoric shamans “calling” the animals they painted on the walls of caves. Folk culture as always produced, twisted or reinterpreted symbols and this use of images fascinates me. Tattoos, graffiti, ex-votos, Haitian vévés and most of non-western art forms have in common the purpose of shaping the world rather than describing it.

Could you give us an example?

For example, the trilogy of words FUERTE SUERTE MUERTE recurrent in my work must be understood as a spell summing up our human existence, a magic spell in the antique meaning of abracadabra, a spell which in past times would have been engraved on an amulet or repeated as a mantra. Another example would be the reinterpretation of African and pre-Columbian statues and masks that I engrave with symbols from other cultural groups in order to find new syncretism.

Which artists have influenced you?

On top of all the anonymous artists mentioned above, some of the artists that have most influenced me are the painter Kee Van Dongen, the Mexican engraver José Guadalupe Posada and the street artist Banksy whose work I discovered in 2004 during my stay in London.

What can you tell us of the techniques you use?

The techniques I use have been greatly influenced by the art supply specific to graffiti such as spray paint and paint markers. I work on paper and canvas. I started out by working on cardboard picked of the street but this material doesn’t age well although it’s still my favourite. I’ve been working with linocut for some time, and I enjoy the fact that the finish is never the same on each piece out of a series of 10 diptych prints.

What are your plans for the future?

I still have tons of sources to look into, for example I’m currently looking into the Marseille’s Tarot cards, the Chinese I Jing or Book of transformations, and I’m working on Nawal portraits inspired by Mayan astrology. In terms of technique, I’m trying out with terra cotta, wood and papier-mâché.