Mike Dargas Healing Beauty

mike dargas
healing beauty

preface
Born in 1983 currently living and working between
his native Cologne and Los Angeles, Mike Dargas
represents a quintessential contemporary artist
whose style reflects a fusion of classical technique
with the aesthetics of the digital age.
Entirely self-taught, Dargas’ technical and stylistic approach to painting depicts a holistic absorption
of the variety of artistic mediums and crafts that he has practiced. From composing large-scale chalk
drawings as a child, to carpentry and his time as a tattooist, Dargas’ accomplished work contains elements
of each medium.
In this series of works ‘Healing Beauty’, these themes come to the forefront in his exploration of fragility
and the feminine aspects of identity. The composition of Dargas’ portraiture presents an underlying
interest in the covering or coating of the skin or the figure, by liquid or material. The lifelike element can be
seen within the pose of the sitters, often in movement, with drips suspended in time. Thus, the paintings,
resemble the photographic medium capturing the ephemeral beauty. As Mike Dargas says, “My paintings
are trying to catch an emotional snapshot and are trying to evoke a certain feeling to the viewer”.
Opera Gallery is delighted to collaborate with Mike Dargas’ for his first solo show in Asia and we look forward
to presenting the promising artist’s latest works in Hong Kong.
Gilles Dyan
Founder and Chairman
Opera Gallery Group
Sharlane Foo
Director
Opera Gallery Hong Kong
3

interview
You were accepted at 11 years old to
an art school, in a class for adults. How
was this experience significant for you
– both personally and professionally?
Back then I was not aware of being the only child amongst adults. I was able to join this class for a year and
only remember how much I loved it.
Can you describe your very first painting and your progression until this day?
I started painting in my early childhood and can not remember my very first painting. But I know that it
opened a whole new world to me. Thanks to my mother’s support I discovered the great works of Salvador
Dalí, Caravaggio, HR Giger, Gottfried Helnwein and others who became influential examples and my
inspiration until today.
Professionally my first work was ‘The Ecstasy of Gold’ (2014). Although I have started painting before
2014, this particular piece feels like my first painting as it has started my artistic career.
Does your earlier success as a tattoo artist influence your painting today?
My whole life I have been sketching, drawing and painting. Tattoo art gave me a chance to do what I loved
for a living. As a tattoo artist, I focused on realistic and surrealistic portraits already and therefore it
became a major part of my artistic self studies.
Old masters such as Dalí, Caravaggio and HR Giger inspire your work. What do you think about their
legacy and the value of art in history?
Caravaggio and Dalí were the reason why I focused on realism. The Old Masters were pioneers and visionaries
of their time. I love their works and have admired them since I was a child. I still feel connected to them in
my work and try to build a bridge from traditional to modern painting.
5

You have a very unique hyperrealistic style, composed of large-scale, oil on canvas portraits. One of
their most visible features is the depiction of different liquids that evoke the senses not only visual
but also tactile and others. Is it a way of constant and essential experimentation?
Let´s say it is realism playing with elements of hyperrealism and photography. And yes, I absolutely enjoy
experimenting with my motifs and techniques and am constantly aiming to develop both.
The whole liquid series started in an experimental shooting in 2014 with the first honey piece. I was
searching for a material that could cover a specific ground without hiding what is underneath. I was very
fascinated by honey as a liquid material and it became the base element of this new series.
In which way do you combine your painting work with photography? Which kind of photographic
characteristics do you adopt the most on your paintings?
When I started using liquids for the first time it was also a premiere to use photo shooting as part of my
painting. Adding photography to my work helped me to catch the right moment of model and liquid blending
into each other. At the end of this first honey shoot my studio was a mess... This was the foundation of my
‘Healing Beauty’ series.
Are you aware that a part of your works can be shocking for being sexually explicit? How do you
respond to this perception?
Blame it on the Old Masters. But seriously: after focusing on faces for years I was curious about the effect
of the human body. And several works are more or less explicit. I guess it is a question of perspective.
Is eroticism an inherent part of your works? Is it something you try to showcase?
Some call it eroticism, others sensuality or aesthetics. To me it is about the beauty within every personality
or moment.
Painters like Richard Phillips also paint suggestive portraits of women, but are reintroduced in a
historic or pop-iconic context. Your paintings stay more anonymous, outside of time. Could you
explain this choice of the lack of clue about the scene or the model behind your paintings?
My art mainly deals with the emotional world. Therefore, I don´t paint concrete imagery. All of my paintings
are trying to catch an emotional snapshot and aim to evoke a certain feeling in the viewer.
Your works are mainly portraits frozen in time. There is a strong sense of stillness in your works, like
the calm before the storm. Can you describe why and how you have chosen to capture this essence?
It is true, my paintings capture a snapshot of the moment. Like you said ‘a calmness’ within a moment to
catch the emotion behind it. If the viewer has the impression to see a glimpse of soul in my paintings I
would be more than happy.
The Ecstasy of Gold, 2014
What do you look for on the faces you choose to paint? Is there a specific reason why you paint
mostly women? What is your relationship with your models? Is it something very fast paced or do
you try to establish a long term and more personal connection?
Faces are a mirror of our soul. My art is also very personal and reflects my current state of mind. So I use
portraits to reflect emotions and personal stories. So my decision for a face is more based on a feeling than
on the relation to it.
I remember an early series which was quite male, dark and destructive. It dealt with inner conflicts and
anger. Whereas the following ‘Healing Beauty’ series with honey and other liquids focused on feminity,
beauty and fragility. The additional liquids in this beauty series imitate the various masks we use in our 7

everyday life to hide and protect ourselves. Compared to early paintings showing a clean portrait, I was
surprised by how easily a personality can be hidden by small adjustments. Beauty, for me personally, also
has a healing effect and in turn became a harbinger for the following ‘Transformation’ series.
Can you tell us more about the inspiration behind your latest series?
My previous series is named ‘Transformation’. I had asked myself how people deal with the search for
identity and personal conflicts. The series explores the process of change – a fundamental and inevitable
circumstance of life. Having gone through major changes myself, I examined the moment of personal
transformation: the struggle, the hope and the fear. This new body of works aims to visually capture a
feeling that is difficult to explain, but universally felt.
When you are working, what’s the studio ambience? Quiet or musical? Early bird or night owl?
While working in the studio I listen to Spotify all the time and I am not a morning person. I enjoy getting up
late, having a coffee latte with a chocolate croissant and working until late in the night.
How do you position yourself in the current German art landscape?
The German art landscape is all about academic degrees, names and concepts. It is very intellectual. I am a
self-thaught artist, painting realistically, focusing on the emotions in art, referring to old-school painters...
I might be falling through the cracks of the German art scene.
Is there any particular work by other artists that you would want to have?
I have just started a collection of other artists’ works. I have a beautiful bronze torso by Carole Feuerman,
a brilliant and strong American artist from New York. I own a paper gun sculpture by brilliant Turkish artist
Irfan Önürmen and a light sculpture by the emerging young German artist Stefan Marx. But there are so
many more works I admire.
Can you talk about your on-going and future projects? What artistic challenges would you like to
take on?
I am very excited for 2018 and my upcoming projects. I will exhibit in Asia, at Opera Gallery Hong Kong for
the first time, join Art Central Hong Kong and will have my first solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in
Germany.
As this is your first solo exhibition in Hong Kong, do you have any words for the local audience?
香 港 你 好 ! 我 很 期 待 見 到 你 !
I hope the translation is correct... but I am really looking forward to meeting you Hong Kong. We will have
a blast !!!
8

Der Mann und die Zeit, 2012 Die Moderne, 2013 Die Muse, 2012 Fallin Angel, 2014 Seek and Destroy, 2014 Genesis, 2014 The More I See, 2015
Virgo, 2016
10
the works
of Mike Dargas elude a clear temporal
distinction. Even if the representations can
stand as indications of a contemporary
Western zeitgeist, the images lose their
temporal determinability through their static transience and acquire an essence of infinity.
Above all, his most recent paintings impress with their oversized and hyperrealistic representation of
people. The artist plays with the effect on the observer right from the beginning. Although the works
appear to be photographs from a distance, on closer observation the large scale of the portrait establishes
the macroscopically precise observation of the artist and his masterly intercourse with colour shading and
colour shift rich with nuances that sharpen the view of the picturesque.
Mike Dargas, born in Cologne in 1983, stood out as early as his childhood years with his talent for drawing.
Through his mother, the young schoolboy discovered the works of Salvador Dalí, Caravaggio and HR Giger,
who acted as an influential example for him as he moved towards adolescence. He attracted the keenest
interest at only eleven years old, when he painted on the cathedral square in Cologne with adaptations
of master works in pastel and chalk. Besides the many and varied techniques which he made his own
through independent study and an adult class, he also began to develop an interest in three-dimensional
art. During his training as a carpenter, he created sculptures from wood and metal. His passion continued
with painting, to which he turned with an intense focus in his mid-twenties, mainly through his work as a
tattooist. With his particularly refined portraits in the style of the Old Masters, Mike Dargas won numerous
awards and distinctions on the tattoo scene and attracted attention worldwide, above all due to the rapid
distribution of his works through social media. He has used social media to eagerly share his enthusiasm
for perfecting painting techniques and high art in the trompe-l’œil style.
restricted to implied surreal spaces together with individual portraits. Since architecture and figure are
often emphasised in equal measure in a scene, the active figures are the ones which appear to have their
gaze turned inwards and are only accompanied by a few accessories, more like on the imaginary stage of
a dream than in a real setting.
His images of men, which came shortly after, see Knastbruder I – III, Seek and Destroy (Jailbird I – III,
Seek and Destroy), all from 2014, demonstrate an affinity to Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro (ital. ‘light-and-dark
painting’) and place the inner conflict as the central motif in the foreground. Mike Dargas always manages
to convey an intimate atmosphere into the pictorial space and deal with his subjects on a real level. Dargas
places his motif, e.g. Die Muse, 2012 (The Muse) in front of a dark background, from which it emerges
mysteriously. He adopts Caravaggio’s use of light and enhances the drama through the interplay of light
and shadow, nuanced by dark, heavy shadows and glaring spotlights, raised sections and highlights. These
stark light-dark contrasts create a great vividness, lending the figures a particularly lively appearance.
In the dark sections, Dargas indicates yet another landscape (Die Moderne, 2013 or Fallin Angel, 2014),
or he completely foregoes background and spatial depth. In this way, the attention of the observer is not
distracted from any additional details. The composition is focussed particularly on the protagonists, even
if in the works Seek and Destroy, 2014, and Genesis, 2014, pictorial elements are already employed as
stylistic masking devices, which in his subsequent portraits of women come into play independently.
As a result, since 2015, Dargas has increasingly devoted himself to the representation of extremely
detailed, oversized portraits in a large format, whose light background becomes a new feature, apart from
a few exceptions (The More I See, 2015 and Virgo, 2016). The back of the painting is now worked through
in sfumato (ital. ‘blurred’) and causes the motif to emerge softly from the background. The blurriness that
is still visible at the edges of the head is lost subtly as we move towards the centre of the face, where it
reveals a macroscopically precise representation.
Dargas created personal feelings and dreams from the reservoir. The debate regarding the relationship
between art and reality was already evident in his early oil paintings. They are thus characterised in
particular by surreal combinatorial analysis of figures and representations of architecture, see Der Mann
und die Zeit, 2012 (The Man and Time), Die Moderne, 2013 (The Modern). In these works, the backdrop is
Together with this vivid effect, the hyperrealistic representation of the portrait in combination with
liquid is stylistically influential. Either the face emerges from the liquid, as in Carpe Diem, Baby, 2015
or liquids such as honey (first seen in The Ecstasy of Gold, 2014) and melted chocolate (first seen in 11

Carpe Diem, Baby, 2015
The Ecstasy of Gold, 2014 Black Gold, 2015 Wherever I May Roam, 2016 Toni I, 2016 Toni II, 2016 Toni III, 2016
Black Gold, 2015) flow over the female face. The first impression of the apparent snapshots evokes erotic
photography or still images from an erotic film. Dargas uses this to enhance the impact of the painting.
The representation of the face as a headpiece is thus shown in various positions such as in the frontal
view, semi-profile and three-quarter profile, the lateral lower view and the top view. The young artist, who
declares portrait painting the highest discipline in art, appears to have reached a high point in his career.
The representation of the beautiful female face can thus on the one hand be dealt with as the muse, and
on the other as a metaphorical comparison of how we deal with the world in general. Above all, the two
latter works mentioned above allegorise the debate on natural resources and the current struggle for
crude oil and gold.
At the start of a new creative phase, Mike Dargas decided to show the eyes of his protagonists either closed
or covered. Intimacy thus becomes the actual motif of the painting. Some women appear to be submerged
in lust, while others have their view of the world impeded by the liquid. Observers have gone as far as to
say that they see something sad in the images. The painter has managed to impressively evoke an element
of attraction and sensitive interplay of emotions for those observing the work. However, his pieces are not
only visually exciting, but also reflect the emotional and dramatic life of the painter at various points in
time. Likewise, he also discusses social conflicts without directly expressing criticism. An indication of this
can be seen in the title of the work partly inspired by Metallica song titles that the artist listens to while
he works, for instance: The More I See, 2015 or Wherever I May Roam, 2016, which offers the observer an
occasion and an opportunity to play their own intellectual game. Within the numerous conflicts of present
times, the conscious experience of beauty has become essential for Mike Dargas’ genesis, with which the
real person takes centre stage with his experiences and feelings.
the primed canvas. The representation of eyes is carried out first of all in oil, as these occupy the darkest
surfaces and are also increasingly directed at the observer and act as a central design feature. Due to
his constant workload, he is continually developing an independent perspective on the present, yet his
pictures deal with painting itself. Through the oversized format of representation, the facial expression
is especially intensified and the effect of the look reinforced. The most recent works have already been
officially scaled down, causing sections of the images to appear unfinished.
We are thus curious as to which reality Mike Dargas will lean towards in future: surely a reality with its
imagination, phantasmagoria, dreams, memories and invoked fragments.
Nicole Loeser
12
He asks friends, acquaintances and models for ideas for new paintings, including the German top model
Toni Garrn in 2016. On accepting the invitation to his studio, he uses photography to develop the concept
for his large-format painting in one session. In an open and trusting atmosphere, he is able to emotionally
experience the effect of his compositions himself and investigate individual compositional elements for
their effect and intensity. Having looked at the photos, the artist begins the actual work using a pencil on
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new works

16
every teardrop is a waterfall, 2017
oil on wooden panel
50 x 50 cm I 19.7 x 19.7 in

18
after forever, 2017
oil on wooden panel
50 x 50 cm I 19.7 x 19.7 in

20
look for the truth, 2017
oil on wooden panel
50 x 50 cm I 19.7 x 19.7 in

22
save your last goodbye, 2017
oil on wooden panel
50 x 50 cm I 19.7 x 19.7 in

24
drunk in love, 2017
oil on wooden panel
50 x 50 cm I 19.7 x 19.7 in

26
wild woman do, 2017
oil on wooden panel
50 x 50 cm I 19.7 x 19.7 in

28
life fully colored, 2017
oil on canvas
190 x 150 cm I 74.8 x 59.1 in

30
sweet dreams, 2017
oil on canvas
190 x 150 cm I 74.8 x 59.1 in

32
the wait, 2017
oil on canvas
140 x 100 cm I 55.1 x 39.4 in

34
golden age, 2017
oil on canvas
140 x 100 cm I 55.1 x 39.4 in

36
in bloom, 2017
oil on canvas
140 x 100 cm I 55.1 x 39.4 in

lithography

lossom B1, 2016
lithography on 300 g paper, edition of 30 + 10 AP
signed, numbered and dated on recto
80 x 60 cm I 31.5 x 23.6 in
40
blossom GE1, 2015
lithography on 300 g paper, edition of 30 + 10 AP
signed, numbered and dated on recto
80 x 60 cm I 31.5 x 23.6 in
blossom L1, 2016
lithography on 300 g paper, edition of 30 + 10 AP
signed, numbered and dated on recto
80 x 60 cm I 31.5 x 23.6 in 41

life fully colored, 2017
lithography on 300 g paper, edition of 30 + 10 AP
sweet dreams, 2017
lithography on 300 g paper, edition of 30 + 10 AP
signed, numbered and dated on recto
signed, numbered and dated on recto
42 80 x 65.5 cm I 31.5 x 25.8 in
80 x 65.5 cm I 31.5 x 25.8 in
43

iography
Born in 1983 currently living and
working between his native Cologne
and Los Angeles. Along with his
first drawings, Mike Dargas started
making oil paintings from a young
age, works which he started selling to friends of his mother. At the age of eleven, he exhibited his talent
publicly, drawing Old Master paintings with pastels and chalk on the pavement in front of the Cologne
Cathedral. He then got accepted in an art school, from which he graduated after a year and a half; the
only child in a class of adults. There, he learnt different techniques, and received a training that led him
to master three dimensional arts, like wooden sculpture. In his early twenties, he built himself a solid
reputation in the tattoo scene and won numerous prizes and awards.
Inspired by artists such as Dalí, Caravaggio and Gottfried Helnwein, Mike Dargas studied various techniques
and since his youth developed a passion for realism, which he narrowed down to hyperrealism over the years.
The extremely precise oil painting technique gives, like photography, a snapshot of the moment. The
artist studies his subjects with such intensity, that each portrait pictures a profile of increasingly intimate
closeness. In his portraits, Mike Dargas is not limited to certain types. He paints young and old, beautiful
and dark, fragile and strong people. They are lost in their thoughts, show inner conflict or convey a unique
or even holy calmness.
The perfection of his technique serves his goal to tend towards the perfect image, reaching for the soul
within each single one. Through his works, Mike Dargas challenges us to take a closer look, to understand
the nature of human beings and to question our own emotional perception.
exhibitions
2018 Healing Beauty, Opera Gallery, Hong Kong (solo)
2017 Transformation, C24 Gallery, New York, USA (solo)
2016 Mike Dargas, Opera Gallery, London, UK (solo)
2015 Enric Miralles meets Mike Dargas, Palau de Casavells, Spain (solo)
Mike Dargas - Malerei, Galerie Benjamin Eck, Munich, Germany (solo)
Opera Gallery, London, UK (group)
2014 Neue Photokunst & Friends, Galerie Display, Cologne, Germany (group)
2013 Freud lässt grüssen, Galerie Atelier I.S., Walhorn, Belgium (group)
fairs
2018 Art Central, Opera Gallery, Hong Kong
Art New York, C24 Gallery, New York, USA
2017 Art Miami, C24 Gallery, Miami, USA
Contemporary Art Fair Istanbul, C24 Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey
POSITIONS, Whiteconcepts Gallery, Berlin, Germany
Art New York, C24 Gallery, New York, USA
2016 Art Miami, C24 Gallery, Miami, USA
Contemporary Art Fair Istanbul, C24 Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey
Art New York, C24 Gallery, New York, USA
Art Karlsruhe, whiteconcepts, Karlsruhe, Germany
2015 Contemporary Art Fair Istanbul, C24 Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey
Wiener Kunst und Antiquitätenmesse, Contempo Fine Art, Vienna, Austria
Stroke Art Fair, Munich, Germany
2013 Art’pu :l Kunstmesse, Cologne, Germany
ARTig, Kommandeursburg, Cologne, Germany
46
museum
2018 Museum Modern Art, Hünfeld, Germany
47

Coordinators: Aurélie Heuzard, Lou Mo
Author: Nicole Loeser
Designer: Élisabeth Chardin
Images: © Mike Dargas
Portraits of the artist: © Traegi
With special thanks to Mike Dargas and Anisá Teclebrhan
operagallery.com
W Place, 52 Wyndham Street, Central, Hong Kong I T. + 852 2810 1208 I hkg@operagallery.com

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