Mungo Thomson: Time Life & A Universal Picture

Karma, New York, US

Karma presents Time Life & A Universal Picture, a dual-venue solo exhibition by Mungo Thomson, on view from March 7 to April 26, 2025, at 22 and 188 East 2nd Street, New York. This marks Thomson’s most extensive presentation in New York to date, bringing together two of his longest-running series: the Time Life videos (2014– ) and the TIME Mirrors(2012– ). The exhibition explores themes of media circulation, seriality, and the interplay between analog and digital imagery, investigating the fluid boundaries of subjectivity and cultural memory.

At 22 East 2nd Street, Time Life showcases a new cycle of Thomson’s stop-motion animations, which use encyclopedias, instructional manuals, and reference guides as source material. Projected on a monumental scale, these works compress vast amounts of printed knowledge into rapidly flickering images, evoking the high-speed processing of robotic book scanners. The nine new videos in the series feature diverse subjects, including a vast seashell collection, a hummingbird in flight, life-drawing models, wheel-thrown pottery, a historical survey of human-made objects, and a silent study of 1970s mime. Other animations present a psychedelic visualization of rock microstructures, a candle burning down in real-time, and a guitar manual used as a musical score. These videos are paired with newly commissioned and existing soundtracks by John McEntire, Eiko Ishibashi, Lee Ranaldo, Mark Fell, and Will Guthrie, and Jonny Rodgers, alongside a Foley score by Paradise Sound Group and a new performance of György Ligeti’s Poème Symphonique (1962) by Casey Cangelosi.

At 188 East 2nd Street, A Universal Picture marks the first exhibition exclusively dedicated to Thomson’s TIME Mirrors, a series of human-scale mirrors silkscreened with the red frame and logo of TIME magazine. Since 2009, Thomson has engaged with the evolving typography of TIME, tracing its shifting logos in graphic studies before developing the TIME Mirrors in 2012. For the first time, the new works on view incorporate embedded photographic imagery, with trompe-l’œil folded corners revealing cultural icons such as a space shuttle launch, the New York City skyline, the planet Mars, Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, a tumbling dollar sign, Kermit the Frog, and Madonna. Installed together, these mirrors create an immersive mise-en-abyme, reflecting the audience, the gallery, and each other in a continuous loop of media imagery.

By placing these two bodies of work in dialogue, Time Life & A Universal Picture examines the shifting role of printed media in the digital age. The TIME Mirrors engage viewers in a reflection—both literal and metaphorical—of historical and contemporary imagery, while the Time Life animations compress vast visual archives into rhythmic, ephemeral sequences. Thomson’s approach troubles the notion of stable knowledge, instead emphasizing the saturation and fluidity of media in contemporary culture.

For more information, please visit Karma’s website here.