The characters of Olot, Spain-based artist Cisco KSL leer at the viewer from walls and canvases, their glance equally penetrating as the hollows he draws in their anatomies. His mustached, tattooed men occupy a bleak world of empty spaces and somber shadows, their crania and mouths opened to reveal diamond teeth and brains that blossom like flowers. An illustrator, graffiti writer and tattoo artist, Cisco KSL fills the backgrounds of his works as well as the characters’ skin with cryptic symbols, rendering elements of urban culture with the painstakingly detailed approach of calligraphy. Nastia Voynovskaya surveys some of Cisco KSL’s recent works below.
