DARREN TANTI

 

Born: 21 November 1987

Nationality: Maltese

 

Formal Arts Education:

Masters of Fine Arts in Digital Arts (Melit.) at University of Malta

B.ed (Hons) Art (Melit) at University of Malta

 

Darren is renowned for his technically accomplished and thematically loaded paintings. Tanti’s preferred media are oils and aquarelles.  The subject he focuses on are hyper-reality, contemporary society and religion

 

Comment on Selfie Challenge:

Apropos

 

 

THE SELFIE

 

SELF-PORTRAIT WITH COURBET AND MICKEY

2014

Oil on Canvas

W50 cm x H70 cm

 

 

It is explicit and clear. Two distinct facets of the artist’s personality are evident in which seriousness and play come together to make a commentary on the self and the way the artist experiences the times we are living in. Without being too encryptic, the artist quotes Courbet’s self-portrait as a desperate man so to mask his physical face. Whilst using the metaphor of the desperate man to refer to the present times of political and social turmoil
there is the quasi-cynical reference to Mickey Mouse that a prima facia might see as an antithesis. Quoting Baudrillard’s Disneyland, Mickey is a simulacrum which highlights a reality that has no origin; it is a manifestation of society’s shift into hyper-reality. In this sense a dialogue between the self within historic contexts and contemporary social/technological
tensions question the fragmentation of reality into the digital world of the web and media.