Mark Dion - Earthly Observatory

Artists

Mark Dion

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Roundup: An Entomological Endeavor for the Smart Museum of Art, 2000/2006
Mixed media installation of black and white photographs and mannequin

Often concerned with questions of epistemology and representation, Dion’s work is firmly grounded in institutional critique. Appropriating natural history methodologies and disrupting disciplinary ideologies, the artist produces empowering works of art that invite us to directly engage with the natural world. These images and mannequin of a naturalist are the archival aftermath of a participatory event in which the artist, along with a team of volunteers, collected insects from the galleries and offices of the Smart Museum of Art in Chicago. Dion thus treated the institution as, simultaneously, object of study and producer of knowledge. Roundup reveals the hidden natural, while also playing with the notion of art spaces as pristine and purely cultural.

Lent by The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago; Purchase, Paul and Miriam Kirkley Fund for Acquisitions.

Mark Dion -

Mark Dion -

Mark Dion -

Mark Dion -

Mark Dion -

Mark Dion was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1961. He received a BFA (1986) and an honorary doctorate (2003) from the University of Hartford, Hartford Art School, and attended the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program.

Dion’s work examines the ways in which dominant ideologies and public institutions shape our understanding of history, knowledge, and the natural world. Appropriating archaeological, field ecology and other scientific methods of collecting, ordering, and exhibiting objects, Dion creates works that question the distinctions between ‘objective’ (‘rational’) scientific methods and ‘subjective’ (‘irrational’) influences. Dion also frequently collaborates with museums of natural history, aquariums, zoos and other institutions mandated to produce public knowledge on the topic of nature. By locating the roots of environmental politics and public policy in the construction of knowledge about nature, Mark Dion questions the objectivity and authoritative role of the scientific voice in contemporary society, tracking how pseudo-science, social agendas and ideology creep into public discourse and knowledge production.

He is the co-director of Mildred’s Lane an innovative visual art education and residency program in Beach Lake, Pennsylvania.

Dion lives with his wife and frequent collaborator Dana Sherwood in Copake, New York and works world wide.