People

Back to Nothing Beside Remains

121 North Highland Avenue
Marfa, TX 79843

Mungo Thomson is a Los Angeles-based artist whose work in various media (film, sound, sculpture, publications, and photographic wall murals) explores backgrounds, negative space and atmospherics – whether material and phenomenological or social and historical. His artworks approach perception and cultural mediation with economy and wit, and often rely on existing forms of recognition and distribution.

As part of Nothing Beside Remains, Thomson produced a magazine – riffing on the aesthetic of typical tabloid periodicals such as People and Us Weekly – full of images depicting art patrons in galleries, museums and other art contexts in which all the artwork has been removed, leaving only the audience. Made available free by mail to members of LAND’s mailing list (and those who subscribe), as well as at various locations in Marfa, People addresses many of the common themes of Thomson’s work: reception and empty space, mass-production and the auratic, the frames around experience and the nature of encounter.

Mungo Thomson has exhibited his work internationally, with solo exhibitions at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris; and GAMeC, Bergamo, Italy, among others. Recent group exhibitions include Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennial), Istanbul; Magical Consciousness, Arnolfini, Bristol; The Cinema Effect, CaixaForum, Madrid; Exhibition, Exhibition, Castello di Rivoli, Torino, Italy; and Compilation IV, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany. Upcoming group exhibitions include Pacific Standard Time: The Ball of Artists, Greystone Mansion, Los Angeles; Lifelike, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Silence, Menil Collection, Houston; and 101 Collection: Route 3, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco. Thomson’s book Font Study (TIME) was recently published by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.