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Taking the tropes of conceptual and post-minimalist art, Thompson's boorish version replaces romantics with a cleverness, inserting pop-culture into the permutations of conceptual art. It's all almost funny. e.g.: taking the October-author-weight of concern with the index and making an indexical film about the antiquated quaintness of the Rolodex, a gallery's. or: John Cage's 4:44 rendered beautifully as symphonic chirping of crickets. or: Pistoletto mirrors ripping the 2006 Time's person of the year cover being "You" and featuring a shoddy mirror, itself derided as a gimmick and now reflecting the viewer for their portrait in a museum. or: Asherian reflexivity as the mail pile grows as a long vacation. The list goes on and critics groan and the uninitiated feel some sort of awe at getting it, art, we get it, the easily explainable trick Mungo's greatest trick of all.
So see too: Peter Coffin at Herald St. , Darren Bader at Kölnischer Kunstverein , John Baldessari at Marian Goodman , On Kawara at the Guggenheim