
Born 1961 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, United States
Lives and works in Copake, New York, United States
Mark Dion
Dion’s work examines the ways in which dominant ideologies and public institutions shape our understanding of history, knowledge, and the natural world. The job of the artist, he says, is to go against the grain of dominant culture, to challenge perception and convention. Appropriating archaeological 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. The artist’s spectacular and often fantastical curiosity cabinets, modeled on Wunderkammen of the 16th Century, exalt atypical orderings of objects and specimens. By locating the roots of environmental politics and public policy in the construction of knowledge about nature, Mark Dion questions the authoritative role of the scientific voice in contemporary society.
Biography
Selected Works

Mark Dion
Cabinet of Marvels
2019
Mixed media
190 × 130 × 48 cm

Mark Dion
Arbeid Adelt
2020
Ink on paper
62 × 48 cm

Mark Dion
Neotropics
2014
Insect net, used shovel, tree branch and rope
Variable dimension
Exhibitions
Texts
Mark Dion's Theatre of the Natural World, Aliya Say, Frieze Magazine, February 2018
Classifying Mark Dion, Daniel Neville, 2016
Oktogon, Albertinum & Grünes Gewölbe, Dresden, Frieze Magazine, February 2015
Mark Dion: "Drawings, Prints, Multiples and Sculptures", Roberta Smith, New York Times, April 2013
Mark Dion’s "Twenty One Years of Think in Three Dimensions", John Beeson, Art Agenda, 2012
Mark Dion: "Phantoms of the Clark Expedition", New York Times, July 2012
Review by Peter Eleey, Frieze Magazine, April 2005
In the Shards of the Past, the Present Is Revealed, Roberta Smith, New York Times, February 2004
Mark Dion - "Collaborations", Ken Johnson, New York Times, April 2003
As Lovely as a Tree? No, but Provocative, New York Times, March 2003
Review by Holland Cotter, New York Times, April 2000