*1972 Erbach/Odenwald – lives in Dresden

Dirk Lange creates large-scale drawings which depict unnaturally sized characters. The dimensions of his works and their representations are astounding, because the motifs chosen by the artist make the works look like small-scale illustrations from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Moreover, their playful ornaments are very meticulously finished in both pencil and colour pencils, and ink.

At first, they can be associated with something romantic, like the works of ancient masters, but when looked upon closely, that first impression fades away. In his detailed constructions of the shapes of objects and ornaments, Lange creates his paintings in layers. He overlays and underlays webs of colours and keeps it all in a fragile balance, with substantial presence and transparency, as if these spectres came from another world and teleported themselves onto the sheet and materialised. The moment you blink, however, they dissolve again into a mist, and their elements or molecules disperse.

Dirk Lange was born in 1972, in Erbach in Odenwald. He is an art studies graduate with a diploma in painting and graphics from the Akademie voor Beeldende Kunsten in Maastricht, the Netherlands. He currently lives and works in Dresden.