Inked
ON DISPLAY JULY - SEPTEMBER
APPETIZERS & BEVERAGES PROVIDED AT THE RECEPTION
CRYPTID HAIR PARLOUR at 2358 STINSON PARKWAY, MINNEAPOLIS
The Works
A small selection of my works.
Artist Statement
Have you ever stopped to evaluate your impressions of things and events, and how you came to such conclusions? In the philosophy of Stoicism, this sort of introspective inquiry and assessment was taken quite seriously and served as the fulcrum between a life well-lived and a life on autopilot. Ancient philosophers had terminology related to these sort of inquiries: phantasia — that is, the impression or mental representation of an event, and its relationship to sunkatathesis, or the act of assent or judgment we give to those impressions. The Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius confronted this in his Meditations (Book 6.13) — the discipline of challenging our impressions of truth and whether or not they are actually worthy of our assent. Furthermore, the first century philosopher Epictetus challenged his students with the notion that our suffering and our resulting poor choices stem not from events themselves, but from the judgments we attach to those events (Enchiridion, §5).
My research in the philosophy of Stoicism has served as a framework through which to examine our collective human experience, asking of myself the same questions I ask of you: what are my impressions, how did I arrive at such conclusions, and are there other possibilities that exist outside my particular point of view? I’ve extended this line of questioning representationally into my pieces through the use of ink washes and expressive line work in India ink, along with abstract watercolor underpaintings. I feel ink is a tremendous medium for exploring this sort of inquiry — it represents how polarized we become around matters of opinion or belief, it also represents a certain permanence that mirrors how rigid we become in our points of view. Furthermore the manner in which I gesturally apply the swaths of ink bear the likeness of how we rapidly and sometimes carelessly arrive at our verdicts, and the areas of complex textures and patterns illustrate how complex and nuanced much of life really is, and how we try to distill the intricate into oversimplified stories and iconography.
I invite you to join me in this contemplative self-inquiry: “What do I see — not just in the art, but every day living? What are my impressions, and by what means did I arrive at those conclusions? How might I explore other angles and points of view, challenging myself to arrive at a more rigorously tested impression?”
Studio 510
2205 California Street NE,
Minneapolis, MN 55418
michael @ michaeltangen.com
patreon.com/michaeltangen
behance.net/michaeltangen2
Artist Biography
Michael Tangen makes work that asks what it means to truly see — not merely to observe, but to interrogate the act of looking itself.
Working primarily in ink, watercolor, and acrylic, Tangen moves between figure study, surrealist automatic drawing, and abstraction. Each mode circles the same question from a different angle — one rooted in his sustained engagement with Stoic philosophy: what is the nature of our impressions, how did we arrive at them, and are they actually worthy of our assent? It is a question the ancient philosophers took seriously as the fulcrum between a life examined and a life on autopilot, and one that Tangen finds equally urgent inside the studio. Ink has become his defining medium — a choice that carries its own philosophy. Unlike more forgiving materials, ink demands commitment. A gesture laid down in dip pen cannot be undone, only worked with, worked through, or worked around. He finds something honest in that constraint: the way a bold, careless stroke mirrors how quickly and sometimes carelessly we arrive at our verdicts; the way dense, intricate texture captures how complex life actually is beneath the stories we tell ourselves about it.
His path to the studio was not a straight one. Across several decades, Tangen has worked as a commercial graphic and multimedia designer, album cover designer, music and film video editor and producer, recording musician and composer, and portrait and fashion photographer — disciplines that are diverse on the surface but share a common preoccupation with visual communication and the relationship between form and meaning. That accumulated sensibility now runs directly beneath the surface of his work as a visual artist.
2026 marks a significant pivot. Tangen joined the Florence Hill figure study co-op, established his first studio practice at Studio 510 in Minneapolis's California Arts Building, and found that the combination of dedicated community and dedicated space unlocked something — the work began arriving faster than he could have anticipated. He is currently presenting his debut exhibition — 29 works in ink and acrylic — at Cryptid Hair Parlour in northeast Minneapolis, on view through September 2026, with collaborations and commissions now underway alongside an expanding body of work. The studio door is open, and so is the invitation: to look, to question what you see, and to sit with the uncertainty of not immediately knowing.