Los Angeles-based artist Mungo Thomson’s works ponder notions of mysticism and the big questions in life with an underlying deadpan wit. For the Hammer’s Lobby Wall, Thomson presents a variation of his Negative Space project, which as he puts it, “came out of reflecting on the color of nothing; in outer space the void is black, and in the art context the void—the empty gallery—is always white.” Thomson found an online image archive of starscape photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and he’s been downloading the copyright-free images and inverting them with a simple Photoshop tool. The result is a spectacular starburst that looks more like a close-up of minerals or marble than space debris. For the Lobby Wall, Thomson has chosen the M74 and NGC 3370 galaxies.

Organized by Hammer curator Ali Subotnick.