Interior with Painter, Woman reading and Maid sweeping Painting

Graduated with a master's degree in Fine Arts from the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht in the Netherlands and a specialization program in history and theory of modern and contemporary art. Based in Strasbourg, where he has been developing his artistic practice since 2016. The work of Leonardo Vargas focuses on painting as a process of transformation. He often works with found images from various sources such as the canon of art history, photographic archives, fashion magazines, or advertising. Through his work, Vargas launches a visual inquiry into the nature of the images and what they represent. He seeks to establish links with images found on different media. He aims to expand the poetic possibilities of the image to empower a visual experience focused on the field of sensation. Thus, the relationship with the image would go beyond its utilitarian approach to surpass simple consumption which is often accompanied by the act of swiping visual content on a screen. In this way, his work explores the possibilities of paint as an agent of visual transformation. By establishing a dialogue between the mediatized image and painting, he confronts "the technical outcome that derealizes these images... to find the human right down to its tearings" * . This dialogue offers a kind of continual becoming where the image is often taken to the territory of the unpredictable or even the unknown. His work has been presented in different exhibitions and International Contemporary Art Fairs. * Extract from the article « NOUVEAUX POSSIBLES : Leonardo Vargas, l’œuvre au-delà de l’image » LEBLANC, Véronique. Revue « Or Norme » # 45, Juin 2022. --- / "NEW POSSIBLES : Leonardo Vargas, the Artwork beyond the image" LEBLANC, Véronique. "Or Norme" Magazine # 45. June 2022. . . .