Sculpture (Sculpture)

My Name as Written by Bruce Nauman

Film & Video (Film & Video)

In Thomson’s Untitled (TIME) , every front cover of TIME magazine is sequentially projected to scale at thirty frames per second. In a way, this work both examines the construction of history and the history of the influential magazine, which was founded in 1923. In addition to the play on “time”—one of Thomson’s ongoing obsessions—this piece highlights and continues the artist’s encyclopedic impulse, also seen in The White Album (2008), to record the history of the spaces he inhabits.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

The White Album (2008) presents a compilation of one hundred issues of Artforum magazine released between 1970 and 1979. As with Will Rogan’s MUM series, also included in the Kadist Collection, vital information is now missing: All of all the articles and features have been removed, leaving only ten years of advertisements. In an unusual way, The White Album reminds us that this important New York-focused magazine was originally founded in 1962 in San Francisco to promote Bay Area artists before it moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1960s in search of a wider advertising base.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Starting with Bruce Nauman’s iconic artwork, The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (Window or Wall Sign) , Mungo Thomson’s neon sign is one of a series that replaces Nauman’s quixotic mini-manifesto with aphorisms from ‘recovery’ culture, especially those made popular by alcoholics anonymous. Thomson is referencing the lore that Nauman’s work (the first of many neons he’d make in the following years) had been inspired by a neon beer sign found in a corner-store in San Francisco that he used as his studio in the late 60s. This particular work has a self-critical subtext, as it also suggests the act of using another artist’s work, in an endless spiral of influence, is akin to a form of insanity.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Half Full, Half Empty

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Golia’s Untitled 3 is an installation in which a mechanical device is programmed to shoot clay pigeons that are thrown up in front of a white wall. More than a simple reference to the sport, the work has the disconcerting effect of creating a danger zone in the gallery space. The reference to direct aggression or violence is reinforced by the piece’s rapid pace.

Advanced Technology (Advanced Technology)

Mutant Garden Autobreeder by Harm van den Dorpel is a generative animated artwork based on evolutionary programming that never appears the same twice. The work is based on an existing algorithm called Cartesian Genetic Programming, invented by Julian F. Miller and Peter Thomson in 1997, the system itself having been finely tuned by van den Dorpel to produce a very particular quality of qualia. The software has been carefully constructed to produce a stream of new and unpredictable mutations that build and react to each previous generation of image.