This afternoon’s live stream book launch and interview with artist Mungo Thomson and Tosh Berman presents Thomson’s new book, Mail (Inventory Press). In 2018 as part of an exhibition at the Hammer Museum, Thomson asked that all incoming  mail — every “letter, package, notice, magazine, flyer, restaurant menu, exhibition postcard, vendor catalog and piece of junk mail that came to the museum” — be collected and forwarded to an off-site location unopened, to be documented at the end of the show.

mungo thomson mail 40This book examines that pile, in what was originally an homage to the history of mail art, but has since become a rousing salutation to the vital role of the USPS in a time of pandemic, privatization, and centrality to the function of democracy. Artbook at Hauser & Wirth, Saturday, August 15, 3pm. artbook.com.

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