Mungo Thomson

Negative Space Variations, the first solo show at a public institution in Italy by the American artist Mungo Thomson, opens on the same occasion. The exhibition is part of the Eldorado series, which GAMeC dedicates to the most exciting international emerging artists.

Negative Space Variations, produced specifically for GAMeC, consists of several environmental installations and a magazine-like artist’s book. Several wall-sized photographic murals, installed in incidental spaces around the museum, depict inverted astronomical photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope: that is, images of outer space in negative. An artist’s book called Negative Space, which simulates the look and feel of an issue of National Geographic, collects these images in a single volume. In a sound installation and reading room, visitors can read the magazine accompanied by a recording of the artist playing an abstract, atmospheric score on wineglasses.

Thomson’s is an artistic practice that uses a broad array of media to recount the pauses, silences, digressions and suppressions of contemporary culture. Made with simple and subtle reversals of cultural artefacts and using materials close at hand, this exhibition concentrates on themes of human knowledge and our relationship with the void, but above all on the limits of this relationship vis-à-vis technology, the trivialisation of spirituality, and the commercialised dimension of the imagination.

Thomson’s book Negative Space was designed by the artist in collaboration with Purtill Family Business and edited by Christoph Keller Editions, and will be published and distributed by JRP|Ringier, Zurich.

From the opening day of the exhibition it will be possible to read a conversation between Mungo Thomson, Alessandro Rabottini, curator at GAMeC, and Dan Cameron, Senior Curator at The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, at the museum website http://www.gamec.it.

The exhibition is supported by the contribution of Amitié Sans Frontières. We are especially grateful to the Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles. Technical partners: GraficheIcona and Zanotta

Pressetext

Mungo Thomson
ELDORADO - NEGATIVE SPACE VARIATIONS
curated by Alessandro Rabottini