Mark Dion

Exhibition Paradise and Perdition from Museum Culture, 2020
Portfolio of eight screenprints in a screenprinted paper folder
Sheet: 11 x 14 inches
Paper: Somerset White Textured
Edition: 20

Thorny Territory from Museum Culture, 2020
Portfolio of eight screenprints in a screenprinted paper folder
Sheet: 12 x 9 inches
Paper: Somerset White Textured
Edition: 20

“The prints I made at the Neiman Center where always driven by invitations from my mentor students who were working in the department and supported by Tomas Vu. Arlen Austin, Nathan Catlin and Martin Basher all wanted to collaborate on developing new prints. With pretty much all the prints I made, I was pushed technically and conceptually by the team at the print shop. Each print I made with the Neiman Center exceeded my expectation and excelled in quality and technical virtuosity. While, I studied print making in school, I was pretty technically inept. I still suck as a printer which is why I treasure my association with Nathan Catlin who has already forgotten more about printmaking then I will ever know.”

Mark Dion was born in 1961 in New Bedford, Massachusetts. 

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, 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. The artist’s spectacular and often fantastical curiosity cabinets, modeled on Wunderkammen  of the 16th and 17th Century, exalt atypical orderings of objects and specimens. 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.

He lives with his wife and frequent collaborator the artist Dana Sherwood in Copake, New York and works Worldwide.