ART4MCCF

MIDAS

MIDAS

DARREN TANTI

Medium: Plaster stone class III, metal and aerosol

Size: 46x20x25cm

Year: 2023

Artwork Description: This art piece is a portrait of the famous Greek king Midas. In the Greek myth, Midas asked the gods to be given the gift of the ‘golden touch’, literally. Unfortunately for the greedy king, he did not see his desires through and ended up turning everything he touched to cold solid gold, even his loved ones. On another occasion, after defying the gods, Midas’s ears were turned to those of a donkey. Unfortunately, due to his actions, this Greek mythology character suffered tough predicaments. A quick look around us will certainly reveal to us plenty of Midases, whose greed and arrogance dictates their behaviour.

€1,200

About

DARREN TANTI

Darren Tanti (1987) is an artist renowned for his technically accomplished and thematically loaded paintings. His focus is hyperreality and the integration of the digital into explorative painting techniques. Darren graduated as an Art and Maltese Educator (B.Ed Hons.) in 2009, and in 2013, he was awarded a Master of Fine Art in Digital Arts with distinction from the Department of Digital Arts (MaKS) of the University of Malta. Presently, Darren is a senior lecturer of Fine Art at the MCAST Institute for the Creative Arts. He served as Coordinator of Fine Art at MCAST ICA from 2016 to 2021. Presently, Darren is also lecturing in the Master of Teaching and Learning (UM) and is serving as a Teaching Practice Examiner for the subject Art. Some of the projects Darren has participated in are the 15th edition of the ‘Biennial of young artists from Europe and the Mediterranean’ held in Thessaloniki in 2011, ‘Time, Space, Existence’ at the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2014 and ‘HomoMelitensis’ at the Venice Biennale of Art 2017. In the same year, Darren’s work was also selected to be part of the Imago Mundi Highlights Collection. He has also participated in the prestigious Ostrale Biennale 2019 in Dresden, Germany, and recently had his work exhibited at the 4th International Biennial of Artworks on Paper (2022) in Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Locally, Darren Tanti has participated in the three editions (2015, 2017, 2020) of the Mdina Cathedral Contemporary Art Biennale and his work has been exhibited multiple times at ‘Il-Kamra ta’ Fuq’ in Mqabba.