EPSYLON POINT

EPSYLON POINT – STENCILS OF REVOLT

July 2017 – 1888 words

GRAFFITI WITH A STENCIL

How did you become an artist?

I enrolled at the Dijon School of Fine Arts on the advice of a friend of my mother's, who was himself an inspector of Fine Arts. I had just finished five years in the army, where I was a terrible soldier: I had to spend a year and a half in the brig, so we parted on bad terms! It was a very good learning experience; I was working in audiovisual production with a small computer used for encoding. One day, after I graduated, for a performance, I wanted to cover a canvas onto which I was projecting a film with black paint. So I bought a can of spray paint. It was the first time I'd ever used one; I'd never tried it before. It was like in comic books, the light comes on, the flash!

What was the special feature of the spray paint for you? For Gérard Zlotykamien, for example, it allows you to mark the wall permanently with a single stroke.

What I find amazing about spray paint is that you don't need to touch the surface. It's like a dance: you can draw a big line, continue on the ground, it's fabulous! Back in the day, when you picked up a paintbrush to write on a crumbling wall, half of it would stick. But with spray paint, you can still write and leave a mark. I used my first can right there in the street, writing nonsense: if you start one, you don't stop until it's empty, it's the same for every graffiti artist! I started by drawing letters, like the E, which became my symbol.

Why the gradual shift from graffiti to stencils?

I needed to depict characters, but I wasn't a very good artist myself. However, having done black and white photography, I knew how to analyze an image. Cutting out the black areas worked well, so I started that way, always spray-painting a background underneath. I did a few multi-layered stencils, especially for nude images, to ensure the definition was really good. But generally speaking, for me, a stencil is a single-layer stencil: if you can't make an image with a single stencil, you don't know how to make a stencil! When I was starting out, we used stencils haphazardly, without having the time to layer several. When artists like Mosko came along a bit later, they took more time. Of course, there were also Jef Aérosol, Blek, Miss.Tic, and Marie Rouffet, who had already been doing it for several years and was very good. My first stencil was Conan the Barbarian, back when I was still doing freehand graffiti. I drew inspiration from what I saw in newspapers and books, but also from fantasy worlds like Dungeons & Dragons.

You place great importance on the abstract and colorful background of your paintings, which stands out from the stencil itself.

I love color. That's why I now only do abstract art: lines, marks, a touch of red, a stroke of green or blue. A stencil is simply an image placed on top, and it's the background that allows the whole thing to become a true painting. It also saves space on the wall. Indeed, a small stencil is almost invisible, whereas with the background you gain three meters, and the painting has more life.

This taste for abstraction comes from Malevich and Kandinsky, who for me are the two pioneers of the 1920s, before Pollock, the dripping, And the others… By doing abstract painting, I've more or less figured out how to calculate shapes and position them. Once you've mastered that, you can paint patches of color, because abstraction starts in the mind.

THE STREET, AN OPPORTUNITY TO WORK IN GROUPS

What role did the street play in your work?

I've always been in the streets, whether skateboarding, playing in a marching band, or studying at art school. All of that eventually came together, and the street became my studio. Plus, when I started out in 1979, there were tons of walls available because there were only about ten of us graffiti artists painting, like Bando, Mode2… Younger people don't know me as a graffiti artist, if they even know me at all!

Could you tell us about your move to Italy in the 90s and how you trained stencil artists there?

I had a friend who taught at an international design school. I taught him how to do stencils and backgrounds, and he then taught it to his students. During the year, they all ended up in my studio. I explained to them how to read an image, how to cut simply, even with multiple stencils. So, although it wasn't exactly a stencil school, everyone who started doing stencils in Turin had been my students or students of my students.

What about the movement? The Pack which you take part in once you return to France?

It's rare to find a group of stencil artists, unlike graffiti artists. Stenciling is an individual activity; you're usually at home making the cutouts. The Pack It had a similar goal to the Italian group, through knowledge sharing and teamwork. I taught loads of people, like Spliff Gâchette and Petit fou. We don't have to hide our trade secrets, it annoys me! The more people who paint, the better off we'll be.

Gâchette and I worked together a lot. I did the images and he did the text. We were on the same page and it worked very well. We worked together in the studio, each adding images and text according to our own vision.

PROVOKE A REACTION

You are one of the only ones to have addressed erotic topics in France with Miss.Tic.

And my drawings are even hotter than his! You often see paintings of big-breasted women, of guns, but nobody paints people having sex. There are maybe only ten or so artists in the world who tackle these themes, mainly because it's expensive if you get caught doing that kind of thing. In a graffiti competition, if you depict a guy getting a blowjob from another guy, you can rest easy, everyone will be all over you!

It feels as if it draws inspiration from Asian designs.

It's funny because it's not their main production. We know it because it was fashionable, but the drawings are very different between China and Japan, for example: while the Japanese often depict large, veiny penises with very elaborate movements, the Chinese works are much softer, a kind of Kama Sutra without exaggeration.

These erotic paintings inevitably provoke a strong reaction from the public and force them to take a direct stance.

It's true that there are times when things get tricky. I like butts, and nobody was depicting them; if that had been the case, I wouldn't have done it. But if we exist, it's because our parents went through it at least once, right? Our hero is Thanatos: you find plenty of skulls on the walls, but no butts. Sex is the ultimate taboo. In writing, you can say whatever you want, on a microphone too. In drawing, however, it's completely unacceptable. This need to provoke a reaction is a personal obligation; my doctrine is “Fuck them all!”

Your work also includes genuine social demands through the series Human Stupidity: the figure of the worker makes an appearance there.

I was born in 1950, so I was a student in 1968. Back then, we were much more politically engaged than we are today: now, young people, even if they're interested and knowledgeable, don't give a damn. Writing on walls is an act of protest: even if it's aesthetically pleasing, it's inherently political because it's visible to everyone and imposed on everyone, regardless of their taste. The message is therefore political in the truest sense of the word. polite, the city. This gesture brings us closer to Soviet art and the revolutionaries; during the Irish War, for example, the walls were painted. Facing the great murals Nowadays, nobody protests because they're often pretty animal murals. Everyone accepts them, except maybe when they're the giant rats from ROA: but as I tell my friends, I don't draw cats!

THE SEARCH FOR ABSTRACTION

Why did you switch from stencils to abstract painting?

I was tired of cutting out stencils after forty years of work. If I were skilled enough today, I'd design on the computer and have the stencils laser-cut. I think it's great, even if the result, whether too precise or not precise enough, isn't the same as one done by hand. With abstraction, I no longer need to do that; I enjoy applying colors. I've always created abstract canvases, but for a long time I set them aside. Now, the more colors I use, the more fun I have. I don't mind adding a stencil, as long as I don't have to cut it out. It's a part of the work that doesn't interest me. Besides, with age, my eyesight has deteriorated, and I go out less. When I was thirty, I was always outside, but at sixty-seven, I only go out when I'm invited, especially since spray paint ends up being expensive.

You wanted to fight against the overabundance of images in the street. But today, there's also an overabundance of street art!

We're bombarded with images, especially advertising. They use half-naked women to sell toothbrushes. My work was just street art; it's quickly forgotten, the time it takes for the city workers to come and repaint. Apart from people who took photos and then dig them out, the rest disappears, and that's part of the process. One winter, when I injured my hand and couldn't cut anything, I made several collages, but they don't last even as long! Back when I was in Balard, an old guy who passed by would see me painting on the wall every time—a wall that's no longer there, by the way—and give me ten francs to go have a coffee. Back then, there weren't too many people, whereas now you have to go to the countryside!

Why would you want to change your name now and go from Epsylon Point to Eureu?

If I sign Epsylon, everyone will expect stencils. As Eureu, nobody knows me, so I can freely do abstract art. But during my career, I've had at least five or six different tag names. For the moment, Eureu has replaced Epsylon. I kept the E, which has always been my symbol. Eureu could even sue Epsylon!

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