Lex Thompson ~ Minnesota

Days of Future Past Codex
By Lex Thompson
Minneapolis, Minnesota: Lex Thompson, 2007. Edition of 3.

7 x 9"; 47 pages with 7 image plates. A combination of inkjet print image plates and textual pages. Image plates of collages of ancient manuscripts and pulp magazine illustrations. Text typewritten on acid-free newsprint. Quotations from a variety of works regarding history and time.

Lex Thompson: "The hopes and dreams of American popular culture play out in the history that we all experience everyday. We hope for a future and even that future desire becomes a dated past. The dreams of extra-terrestrials and new of modes of travel that excited the minds of the 1950s conjure in us a wistful amusement. Underlying this shared time are other traditions we have been given, sacred scriptures, cryptic hieroglyphs, and a curiosity about things that might transcend this history. These elements intermingle to give shape to our daily narrative, both its hidden structures and its exterior veneer.

"... Both images and text are meditations on the interpenetration of the present by the past and the future, even when that past and future are only what we imagine them to be."
$450

Target
By Lex Thompson
Minneapolis, Minnesota: Lex Thompson, 2007. Edition of 7.

13.5 x 8"; 32 pages. Inkjet and letterpress printing. Pages printed on BFK Rives Gray, Epson Enhanced Matte, and Fabriano Moss Green Paper, using a Vandercook Press and an Epson 2200 Archival Ultrachrome Printer. The cover label and bookmark are actual items recovered from the factory.

Lex Thompson: "Target is a book comprised of photographs taken in the abandoned Winchester Rifle Factory in New Haven, Connecticut. Intermingled with the images are old photos and textual excerpts taken from items (a time card, manufacturing inspection sheet, newsletter, etc.) found in the factory. Included with the book are an actual time card, as a bookmark, and an address label inset into the front cover. The photographs document the now hollow place where labor and social life intermingled. But, only so much can be known from these remnants alone. The spaces are filled by the artifacts gathered off the factory floor. They present the life and activity of those that inhabited this building. The beauty and romanticism of the ruin is populated by a specific, if incomplete, record of the building's life."
$600

Greetings from Colma
By Lex Thompson
Minneapolis, Minnesota: Lex Thompson, 2004. Edition of 150.

4 x 6", 34 postcards in red paper wrap case with slip-in tab closure. Printed on a four color press by Nomad Printing. Standard in red paper wrappers. Deluxe edition, in blue cloth covered box with map of Colma lining interior.

Since 1902 it has been illegal to bury or cremate bodies in San Francisco. This is done in flourishing Colma, situated strategically just south of the city limits. Sandwiched between immaculately landscaped cemeteries are flower shops and headstone suppliers necessary to complete the economic community of the dead, a peculiar amalgam of life, death, ethnicity, religion, consumerism, and tourism thanks to the gods of zoning.

This set of over forty postcards features photographs of the mortuaries, florists, and monument retailers. The postcards pose as mementos for tourists as well as sales pitches for future visitors and residents.

The places are real. Thompson’s presentation allows and even calls for both critique and celebration. Satire? Documentation? Yes. Yes.

Lex Thompson: “Three quarters of Colma's inhabitants are decomposing. The majority of them are housed in a series of establishments stretched along El Camino Real….The deceased come to stay, but the living visit. And it is not just relatives who come to the next world. The cemeteries have tourist appeal. Groups travel to see this city of tombs for the novelty of the area and for the famous San Franciscans who reside there. Gothic teens with morbid fixations join history buffs and the idly curious in their fascination with this assemblage of remembrances of life and death….In order to synthesize and commemorate this unique blend of remembrance, tourism, and resort atmosphere, it is appropriate that the city of Colma have a series of postcards from its attractions. The set of over forty postcards…features photographs of the mortuaries, florists, and monument retailers. They are mementos for tourists as well as sales pitches for future visitors and residents….Greetings from Colma takes its language directly from the city's resort like façade. By mimicking already present elements of the landscape, and associating them with the consanguine form of the postcard, the cards muster a good-humored, loving, and respectful critique of both Colma and the postcard format. They harness the touristic, cultural, and commercial dynamics of these cemeteries, capturing the curiosity of this second San Francisco….It takes the physical place as it is presented, and emphasizes the aspects that make the city simultaneously so bizarre and so grand."
Deluxe: $150
Standard: $ 45