Through two emblematic works, the Californian artist places ephemeral images and objects destined for abandonment within the long term. Deploying video, sculpture and installation, Thomson explores popular cultures and shifts our gaze onto the familiar, which he suddenly makes strange.
Erected in the courtyard of Lafayette Anticipations, Snowman is a monumental tower inspired by cardboard postal shipping and delivery tubes. Packaging materials destined to circulate and then disappear, they become here a slender bronze sculpture.
The film Time Life Volume 15. Monument to a Period of Time in Which I Lived is the fifteenth instalment of a series of stop-motion animations, each composed of thousands of images taken from books. A succession of candles scrolls past it like so many flashes, drawn in particular from religious, art history or decoration books.
With Snowman and Time Life Volume 15 , Mungo Thomson overturns the very idea of the monument.