Fran Cisco is a highly talented, Portuguese artist whose work explores the homo-erotic aesthetic, with a focus on the male physique and a select variety of gay and fetish items. From gummy bears to butt plugs to used underwear, Fran Cisco employs diverse mediums such as pencil and charcoal to bring the inanimate to life. He can also create a human figure full of sensuality and emotion with just a single line. His style is minimal and exquisite, but still quintessentially queer.
It was over ten years ago that Fran Cisco created the 1Line drawing series. Beginning with one blue dot, he carries a line to create a beautiful and muscular form, ending at a single point, the red dot.
“from blue to red anything can happen” Fran Cisco
His Blue series is a continuation of the 1Line drawing, but in combination with an additional handmade chemical technique often used to depict ejaculation across a blue canvas. He created a Sculpture series based on the 1Line drawings that takes the two-dimensional characters into the third dimension.
But his most impressive creations are the Realistic series of drawings. Underwear, cock rings, rubber gloves and more, Fran Cisco captures light and dark beyond the scope of a camera or naked eye. He develops a texture in each drawing that evokes a story in your imagination.
Fran Cisco is a man of not-so-many words. The strong silent type, you could say. I was able to ask him a few questions about his work, to better understand it and was pleased to receive his brief, yet poetic responses on the respective topics.
Your work is described as ‘highlighting masculine themes’. How would you define masculinity?
Masculinity, because in a literal way I approach the subject of Man, in the figurative, sexual, sensitive sense.
The figures of men in your work are typically very muscular. Is a muscular body representative of something specific or is it more about aesthetics?
Nothing in particular about the muscular, perhaps a more classical influence in the artistic register, which in no way prevents me from starting tomorrow to dedicate myself to another type and different aspects of the body, from what is invisible to what is possible to be seen.
Your Blue series is highly sexual, and I personally find it empowering as a gay man. How has where you grew up influenced or inspired your work?
What I intend in the representative form is how I can enhance or even exaggerate the power of what I feel in that particular type of bodily sensation, how I elevate it to a level that goes beyond bodily sensation, to power infinity and cosmic unknown.
Fran Cisco has requested to remain anonymous.
Visit the Fran Cisco Art Exhibition
From October 27 – December 1
At Mister B Amsterdam
Prinsengracht 192
