KOZO has turned six vehicles from The Peninsula London into a series of moving pictures. Titled A World Within, the project runs from 1–31 October 2026, placing the Brooklyn-based tattoo artist’s detailed imagery on cars travelling through the capital.
The green bodywork appears to split and peel away. Beneath it, landscapes, architecture and sculptural details emerge in carefully contained openings. The effect asks for a second look: a passing car seems to reveal another place inside its surface.
From skin to the street
KOZO is known for microrealism in tattooing, where the placement of an image is inseparable from the shape carrying it. A vehicle presents another set of interruptions: door seams, handles, wheel arches and reflections. Here, the artwork follows those changes rather than treating each car as a flat rectangle.
The project uses digital artwork produced as bespoke vinyl wraps, applied by Topaz. The images are reproduced across the bodywork, with their apparent tears and lifted edges created through illusion. The surface stays intact even where the image makes it appear broken.
In the photographs, pale stone and open countryside sit against the dark green finish. Small figures and architectural fragments invite close inspection, while the larger openings remain readable from a distance. The bonnet and side panels offer different views into the same imagined interior.
Developed with Larry Warsh’s CART Department, the fleet brings together two Rolls-Royce Phantoms, a Bentley Bentayga, an electrified Austin taxi, a BMW i7 and an LEVC. Their different silhouettes give the project a useful variety: one visual language shifts between formal limousine, contemporary electric car and familiar London taxi.
There is a particular appeal to work that moves through a city. Its audience changes at every junction, and its background changes with it. These vehicles still serve a practical role as transport bookable by hotel guests, so the imagery travels with an everyday activity rather than remaining in a single exhibition space.
A World Within is on the road in London throughout October. See The Peninsula’s project page for details. For another approach to the car as an artistic surface, revisit MSCHF’s transformation of Lexus vehicles in New York.
