THOMSON, Mungo; DIRIÉ, Clément (ed.)
Mungo Thomson

Spanning his entire oeuvre, this first comprehensive monograph focuses in particular on the Mungo Thomson’s three main series that embody his exploration of popular culture and everyday objects to question what we most take for granted, or fail to notice.

In the TIME series, person-sized silkscreened mirrors bearing the red border and logo of the 100-year-old international weekly newsmagazine, pair a precise historical moment with the viewer's own reflection in the present. As a series, these works form their own archive, reflecting each other, and picturing the viewer within an infinity room of culture and politics and media and design.

The Wall Calendar series displays commercial calendar images as if held up to the sun, allowing the reverse side of the page to show through. Printed on both sides of fabric and stretched over a lightbox, recto and verso are collaged together with light—the calendar grid of a single month is superimposed onto a photograph of a 40-million-year-old mountain, and the everyday minutiae of living is put into scale with geological time. These works consider geochronology from a precarious contemporary vantage, contrasting evocations of elevated consciousness with contemplations of extinction.

Thomson’s Snowman is a series of trompe-l’oeil stacks of Amazon boxes and other online retail shipping cartons cast in sturdy patinated bronze. Both a droll contribution to the field of outdoor sculpture and a mineralogical transformation of the temporary and ephemeral into the permanent and geological, in 2020 the Snowman also became public art for a depopulated world. [publishers’ note]

With texts by Donatien Grau, Mungo Thomson, Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer, Tim Griffin; and a conversation between the artist and Laura Owens.

Published by JRP, 2023
Design by Gavillet & Cie
Monographs