Mungo Thomson
[5][6][7] Critics place his work within the tradition of West Coast conceptual art, while also noting its incorporation of the divergent vocabularies of minimalism and the Northern Californian counterculture, New Age mysticism and popular science.
[8][9][10][11] Critic Francesco Tenaglia notes that Thomson's later work updates themes of the Pictures Generation and appropriation art: "Using techniques such as mounting, erasing and reframing, he successfully addresses issues such as the permanence of the image, its value and status, and the emergence of aesthetic practices from the diffusion of technological media.
[7] His early solo exhibitions took place at Margo Leavin Gallery (Los Angeles),[27][2] John Connelly Presents (New York),[28][29] Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (GAMeC),[30] Kadist Art Foundation (Paris),[31] and the Hammer Museum.
[12][4] Critic Martin Herbert suggests that Thomson fuses exclusive practices (conceptualism, minimalism) to the inclusive ethos of avant-garde composer John Cage, taking a "broader interest in privileging access, in disseminating an open-ended, chancy art about an expanding sense of context … specifically, through artworks that both move into public arenas and put democratic spins on high-art reference points.
[3] He superimposes, re-translates or inverts different realms of thought and experience, using structuring systems and premises, subtractive methods or iterative processes that build from discrete parts (film frames, book pages, CMYK dots).
"[28][20][4] Thomson's solo exhibitions have generally featured disparate objects, drawings, films and sound pieces in combinations that Los Angeles Times critic Christopher Knight first described as "wryly engaging" and characterized by a "gentle discord, in which perception, memory and imagination compete.
"[2][27][28] His sculptural objects have often riffed on familiar types and images from mainstream and alternative culture, fine and folk art, and Americana, inspiring double-takes at their unexpected juxtapositions of consumer goods, artisanal craftsmanship and political or populist content.
Emanating from an overlooked, purely functional "dead zone" of the museum, the sound changed according to time of day, weather, and number and type of coats being checked, forming a dialogue centered on service staff and visitors.
[42][5][11] The final work (a life-size video projection of a 17-piece ensemble performance, an installation, embossed sheet music and an artist book) played with shifting phenomenological and institutional contexts and registers of "high" and "low" art—formally dressed musicians simulating a common insect sound, "crickets" signifying audience silence.
[43][28] Thomson also looked at these themes in printed projects, such as the tabloid People (2011), in which he digitally erased all the artworks from repurposed photographs of art fairs, galleries and museums, refocusing attention on the gestures, attitudes and styles of spectators contemplating empty walls and booths.
[4][36][20] The time-lapse video Untitled (TIME) (2010) scrolled through the magazine's covers to date, depicting its evolving design, changing topics and framing of life over nearly a century, in the process highlighting a sense of ephemerality and idiosyncrasy rather than coherence.
[39][8][12] Nonetheless, critic Hal Foster observed that the series' editing, framing and evident staging undercut the instructional genre it derived from, achieving a "how-not-to aspect [that is] a function of the out-of-date status of the source materials … the implication [being] that each new medium all but destroys the ones before it.
