access+ENGAGE Issue 24: What Dreams Are Made Of

Banner artwork: The First Rain and Ether by Michael Thomsen, this month's Zoom In artist. If you visited the November exhibition, Festival of Appropriation, at the Soap Factory you likely saw a number of Thomsen's pieces on display. His work is currently showing as part of a group exhibition presented at the prestigious Art Basel in Miami Beach, Florida December 6-7. Inquiries about specific pieces may be directed to Flanders Contemporary Art Gallery or Rogue Buddha Gallery. Visit Michael Thomsen's website to keep track of his upcoming projects and to see more of his work online.

 

About the artist: Michael Thomsen was born in the shadow of the Hormel meatpacking plant in Austin, Minnesota, to a family that included auctioneers, painters, circus performers, a clock and violinmaker, and a former member of the Lawerence Welk ensemble. Thomsen first began painting at a young age, when a doting aunt with a penchant for Wicca gave him paints and told him to create. Born with a dyslectic learning condition and natural creative bent, Thomsen spent his school years focusing on the extra art classes that allowed him to graduate.  By his early twenties he had branched out from painting and began experimenting with music and super-eight films. It was also during this time that the dark side of Thomsen’s genetic legacy surfaced.  Clinical depression led to several years of stagnation in the state hospitals and halfway homes.  Finally, with the support of close friends, Thomsen relocated to Santa Cruz, California, where he began a new chapter of his life by painting monarchs’ migration.  In 1997 his first one-man show ushered in a prolific period that has continued to this day.

Thomsen’s work occupies the uncharted domain that lurks between painting and sculpture. The pieces mold together psychological theory, lurid carnival details and a playful attack on the omnipresence of technology to produce a place of intrigue and sanctuary for the viewer.  Conjuring a slightly demented toy maker’s fondness for odd mechanics and disturbing juxtapositions, he uses found objects scavenged from thrift stores, alleys, rummage sales, and junk drawers to create a multilayered dream reality.  Thomsen possesses a vision that allows him to reanimate seemingly opposed objects into darkly playful gestalts.

Thomsen’s latest works are painterly in nature, explosive with translucent and iridescent colors.  Religious longings and symbolic reconciliations of childhood demons are wound through the thick mounds and cliffs of paint mediums.

-David Tribbett, 2003 (Reprinted here courtesy of the artist)