Mungo Thomson

The American Desert (for Chuck Jones), 2002

We are pleased to present Mungo Thomson's The American Desert (for Chuck Jones) (2002) for one month. For this 34-minute video, Thomson worked through the twenty-five Road Runner cartoons that Chuck Jones directed for Warner Bros. between 1949 and 1964, digitally removing all characters from the footage. The work was completed shortly before Jones's death, and is held in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

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Mungo Thomson‘s work is known for its engagement with cultural signs and analog materials and repurposing them into immersive optical and kinetic experiences. Recent solo exhibitions include Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Aspen Art Museum, Aspen; and Karma, New York. He is the recipient of a 2025 Guggenheim Fellowship and was featured in the 2025 New York Film Festival. He lives in Los Angeles.