Thomson’s work pairs a distinctly West Coast conceptual sensibility with an interest in cosmology, mysticism, and reception. In Thomson’s diverse art—including film, sound work, sculpture, publication, and photographic wall murals—simple processes of inversion and transformation are joined with an expansive sense of space and context.
Mungo Thomson is interested in cosmology, mysticism and the big questions of life. His work that often shows elements of American pop culture and often has underlying humoristic tone. In his work he combines the simple processes of reversing and transforming the broad term of space and context. Thomson uses diverse media, including film, sound, sculpture, prints and photographic wall pieces. For Hammer Projects in LA he realized amongst others a huge wall piece, “Negative Space’ project. This project originated from a reflection on the colour of nothing, in space the nothing is black, but in context of Art the colour of nothing is de emptiness of an empty wall which is white. For Hammer Projects Thomson found an online archive of images of ‘starscape’ photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, that he adjusted with simple tools of Photoshop. The result is a spectacular explosion of stars that looks more like a close up of minerals or marble than space waste.