Manzur Kargar

Art World Demystified on WYBC

Manzur Kargar was born in 1965 in Kabul, Afghanistan. From 1988 – 1991 he studied painting at the University of Fine Arts (HBK) Braunschweig and from 1991 – 1992 at the University of Fine Arts (udk) Berlin. He has lived and worked in Berlin since 1996, with periodical stays in Los Angeles and New York. In addition to being a painter, he is also a musician and composer, currently playing in the band ARTISTS ON HORSES.

In his early works, Kargar focused primarily on early classical art, looking all the way back Hellenistic Greece. But in the last decade, he has focused on reproducing mass media images of contemporary advertising through painting. His inspiration comes from glossy magazines, television and the Internet. The artistic exploration of “advanced” civilizations is central to his work. No matter which era inspires Kargar, he depicts the human figure as shaped by its time. Kargar now interprets the world as it is currently presented in the media: sugarcoated, unreal, dramatic, seductive, frightening, bizarre and glamorous. He uses motifs with which we are all familiar, pulls them out of their contexts and puts them into new ones. This creates a sensation of irritation. The viewer cannot resist the attraction of his hyper-realistic work, painted with elaborate traditional techniques in numerous layers.

With the combination of digital and classic art, Kargar’s paintings mark the span of painting from the originated emotional base into the inevitable digital age.