Very oily. Very dense. Loaded of silent erotism.
Chocolate syrup and honey slowly drop from the head, spreading all over the face and tickling on the ground.
Lips are slightly open, waiting for an invisible kiss to come, delighted by the pleasure that the gluey substance gives.
Mute, anguished screams or silent calmness are stuck on canvas, Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro enlighten the virtues and hide sins in shadow.
Mike Dargas’s paintings are liquid and sticky at the same time. They look like photographs, but they aren’t. Thanks to his amazingly precise techniques he portrays unique subjects with superb intensity and realism, focusing on the reaction from a pleasing torture or an intestinal pain. Latex and lace bandages, golden earrings and choking papers are precious details that adorn the reality of the scene; but the feelings of the soul are the real protagonists: the kind of sensations that arises in the viewers is the final goal: destabilization, excitation, embarrassment, curiosity.
Mike has always had this artistic nature: born in 1983, he started painting when he was a child, selling his first works to friends of the family. At the age of 11 he showed his skill in public, when he painted the road surface on the “Domplatte” in front of Cologne Cathedral. As a prodigious talent, he was admitted as the only child in an adult class; he learned different techniques, but his favorite one – oil – is recognizable since his early works.
Dargas dedicated his early 20s to tattoos; with Dalì, Caravaggio and H. R. Giger as main inspirations, then he started interesting in surrealism and realism. By portraying different subjects, from young to old, from fragile to strong, from beautiful to dark, Mike’s aim is to take a deeper look, not stopping on the surface, but discovering the inner nature of the human being, questioning our personal perception of characters portrayed and extending it to people around us.
Article by Marina Lepori
Find more on Mike Dargas here: WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM | FACEBOOK |TWITTER
