Gabriel Abascal’s ethereal graphic design evokes daydreams of childhood clip art, Nintendogs and Hannah Montana CDs

Sometimes an artist hinges their entire aesthetic around the creation of their own personal archive. For the Venezuelan, Brooklyn-based artist Gabriel Abascal, his distinct and oddball art is driven by the feelings he gets from pop music, vintage Sanrio toys, Bratz dolls, animals, bodybuilding and internet ephemera. His blend of graphic design and digital painting-with-images feels like images seen in half-asleep dreams of childhood clip art, complete in endearing low-res abstraction.

“My obsession with world-building and material craft began in 2007 when I received my Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus CD. At nine years old, I was mesmerised by its use of typography, imagery material finishes, and how one single commercial package could contain so much,” says Gabriel, who isn’t alone in his fascination with late 2000s pop-kitsch. “When I moved from Venezuela to the US at age twelve, making fan-made album art in online pop forums became my sanctuary, a vital tool for me as I navigated a jarring cultural transition and began coming to terms with my identity and sexuality.”

Gabriel’s RISD thesis I And Love And You synthesised his influences into a defined, varied visual world that explored graphic design as a way to world-build. From labradors ripped right off Nintendogs-like promotional art to iSpy-esque catalogues of random object PNGs glitter-bombed across stock photos, Gabriel’s worlds are simultaneously specific enough to reflect his design ethos, but also strange and open-ended enough to allow viewers to enter and play. “Navigating this balance of high and low art allows me to unabashedly celebrate what I love as an act of self-care and self-preservation,” says Gabriel. “It’s something I still adamantly believe in as a means of healing my twelve-year-old self.”