Mungo Thomson

SEP 29 MON: September 29 2008, 07:00pm; Hammer Lectures

: Mungo Thomson Negative Space 2006 Artists' book published by Christoph Keller Editions and JRP/Ringier. Designed by Mungo Thomson with Conny Purtill. Full color, 160 pages. Courtesy the artist and Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, and John Connelly Presents, New York.; Mungo Thomson Negative Space 2006 Artists' book published by Christoph Keller Editions and JRP/Ringier. Designed by Mungo Thomson with Conny Purtill. Full color, 160 pages. Courtesy the artist and Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, and John Connelly Presents, New York.; Mungo Thomson Negative Space (STScl-PRC2006-03a) 2006 Color Photography. Dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist and Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, and John Connelly Presents, New York.

Thomson discusses his recent Negative Space project on view on the Lobby Wall, as well as other works from his film of a tree falling in the forest—literally—to a handmade comic book called Einstein.

About the Exhibition

Los Angeles-based artist Mungo Thomson’s works ponder notions of mysticism and the big questions in life with an underlying deadpan wit. For the Hammer’s Lobby Wall, Thomson presents a variation of his “Negative Space” project, which as he puts it, “came out of reflecting on the color of nothing; in outer space the void is black, and in the art context the void – the empty gallery – is always white.” Thomson found an online image archive of starscape photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and he’s been downloading the copyright-free images and inverting them with a simple Photoshop tool. The result is a spectacular starburst that looks more like a close-up of minerals or marble than space debris. For the Lobby Wall, Thomson has chosen the M74 and NGC 3370 galaxies.