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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Michael Thomsen & Ryan Nygard @ Speedboat Gallery
Wednesday 12 February @ 14:30:04 |
 by John Tribbett
Michael Thomsen hails from Austin, Minnesota. It is a city known world wide for SPAM and the cheeky museum celebrating this suspect pork product. But, lurking beneath the small town’s quaint all-American aura lurks a shadow world populated with characters and situations more akin to a David Lynch movie than an episode of Leave it to Beaver.
2B by Michael Thomsen
Thomsen grew up on the city’s Eastside were the stench and squeals from “the kill” at the Hormel plant was a steady backdrop to his youth. Luckily, a babysitting aunt saved him from his cigarette-smoking and windowing-breaking peers by regularly putting paints in his hand. Stricken with learning difficulties, it was only through extra art classes he was able to graduate from high school in 1984. By this time, he was also working with experimental super eight films, rock flyer art, collage and was playing in underground bands. Then everything went blank.
Thomsen began a decade long battle with depression. Productivity ceased except for occasional musical stints. A resurrection began when, spiritually dead and living in Santa Cruz, “My girlfriend put paints and brushes in my hand and told me to paint,” Thomsen says.
He moved back to Minneapolis and entered a period of intense productivity. Eventually he began showing at local galleries like Flanders and Lang Works Studio.
Drawing from his forays into the dark gardens of the mind and the abyss of small town nihilism, Thomsen refers to his work as, “treasure maps of the psyche.” His current show at the Speedboat explores his unique vision. In “2B” the bliss of childhood summertime memories are carried to an exaggerated conclusion. Two giant insects dominate the canvas overwhelming the mescaline highway in the rear. “These are the fat bumblebees that can barely carry themselves, the furry ones that look like buffalos,” he explains.
Using found objects, his work frequently morphs into the uncharted area between painting and sculpture. In “Gumball” an antlered skull is anchored to a canvas surrounded by thickly textured swirls of paint. A plastic fetus swims in a liquid eye, and parts from an electric motor act as a crowning brain. “It looks like a sick gumball machine,” he says. “It’s my bogeyman—the bad sandman goat head.”
The joy in Thomsen’s art is his ability to reanimate lost objects, in all of their disparate conditions, into unified wholes. There is an inherent playfulness and grace lurking within his borders, offering the viewer a happy place to retreat. “Some people find them nightmarish and almost hideous. And some people find them very beautiful and uplifting,” he says.
Ryan Nygard completes Speedboat’s current show with his minimalist inspired pieces. Using fragmented images and photos on layered canvases, Nygard creates collaged works that evoke the landscape of the city. There is a stark quality in his work drawn from the use of simple geometric forms. His horizons are distilled into basic contrasting shapes revealing their aesthetic core. Nygard’s constructions pull you into their depths making you feel as if you have awakened on an urban rooftop, at sunset, in the midst of a shamans dream.
Continues through Mar. 15. Speedboat Gallery, 566 N. Snelling Ave., St. Paul. 651-641-0538.
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