Artist Profile: T. Mikey
Published in ARTisSpectrum (Vol. 19)
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The remarkable vision and technical skill of artist T. Mikey converge to stunning and mesmerizing effect in the medium he calls 3DUV, or Three-Dimensional Ultraviolet. Using a patented process that creates three-dimensional images using ultraviolet light, phosphorescent paint, and multiple layers of transparent film, T. Mikey taps directly into our brain’s image- and sense-making centers, and presents an audacious revelation for the future of the visual arts and high technology.
As a hybrid of painting, photography, collage, lighting design, and sculpture, these multidimensional rough guides to T. Mikey’s world take their inspiration from a multiverse of sources. The arrangements of forms at times suggest the pantheons of Hindu deities, as well as Middle Eastern and Christian church images. Figures from popular Western culture, science both macro and micro, ancient icons, nature, surreal symbolism, subconscious imagery and psychedelic abstraction are merged in T. Mikey’s fantastic realm.
T. Mikey is a storyteller, and his works spin tales–mythological, political, and personal–that are tinged with irony and humor. T.Mikey has called his work “super-sweet eye candy” which also demands a deeper involvement from the viewer. This invitation to participation comes from the more enigmatic qualities of T. Mikey’s works, in which varying intensities of light and glowing paint brings out the works’ more contemplative qualities. There is silence at the heart of these turbulent dreamscapes, and the quietest of them invite the most identification from the viewer.
As a skilled technician as well as artist, T. Mikey foresees the 3DUV medium as ripe for collaboration with other artists and designers eager to redefine the gallery and the domestic space reserved for viewing art. His 3DUV light boxes can be inserted directly into a wall to turn the canvas into a literal window which looks out at another, multidimensional, glowing world of one’s own choosing. T. Mikey’s works are unlike anything that has ever come before, and these audacious and revolutionary products of his unique vision are headed towards the future at nothing less than the speed of light.