Fifth Image in the Ikon Series by Patrick Lichty
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"The cave, such as the one at Lascaux, is a secretive, hidden place. Throughout human history caves have been places for shelter, contemplation, reflection, and even spiritual revelation. In using the metaphor of the Digital Lascaux as a simile for spaces in the emergent electronic world, my Ikons series of images are reflective paintings in the cave of my cybernetic environment. Most of these pieces take on forms similar to that of the mandala. Such forms are sacred spaces which hold within many reflections of ourselves, such as Lascaux holds the reflection of prehistoric humanity. The idea of the Ikons series was to take an image and manipulate it until its representational quality had utterly vanished. What was left was my subjective reflection of form and color which had originally attracted me to the image. In a way, these are digitally-based visual meditations, and such a combination of the visual and the meditative leads one back to the mandala. Following from the central focus and meditative quality of the mandala, another aspect of the Ikons series is that many of the images also seem to hold the singular focus and resonance of medieval icons in their reflective quality. From this derived the name of the series. In understanding that early representations of Christian icons were housed in catacombs, and later in cavernous cathedrals, these images mirror the intersection of the sacred space within the construction of the digital world, and the 'inner' quality of the cave."