Artist Entry: Mark Dion

I chose to write about Mark Dion not only because he is one of my favorite artists ever but because his work is extremely relevant to what I am creating this semester. Dion is an artist, collector, archeologist and environmentalist. It also "examines the ways in which dominant ideologies and public institutions shape our understanding of history, knowledge, and the natural world" (Source). Two pieces I am primarily focusing on are Mobile Bio-Type Jungle and Neukom Vivarium, both environmental, heavily researched pieces where natures beauty, story and the biography of the specimen is the real work of art.

Mobile Bio-Type Jungle is a mixed media piece made in 2002. It is nearly impossible to find any information about the piece itself because most of what Dion is known for (according to the internet) is Neukom Vivarium. However, Bio-Type like most of his work comments on the power of nature versus the growing popularity of science. I've been struggling on incorporating my distain for science into my art this semester but have realized that aspect doesn't necessarily have to be brought up if the rest of my work speaks strongly enough, like Dion's.

Neukom Vivarium

Mobile Bio-Type Jungle

Neukom Vivarium was hands down my favorite. Before I knew what he was about, I was aggravated when I saw the piece because what so many "natural" artists do is pick up nature and put it in a gallery but then they don't think about how they are DISRUPTING nature by doing this! What do you do with the leaves, vines, bark-whatever, after you use it? Throw it away? The collection of my 'tree parts' has only been from already fallen pieces of the tree, I'd like to note. I also am sure to examine each piece before I remove it to ensure it is not a home to any living creature. Before I get off on a tangent though, I will go back to why after hearing him talk about his process on this project, I was so moved by his work. In this project he 'rescued' a fallen tree and worked with a large team to develop a way in which every species using that tree as a home can continue to survive. He built housing for the tree which acts as its own environmentally controlled room with shades, vents, heat, rain-whatever the tree needs to continue to survive.

Overall, his work's message is where I am trying to get mine to be. The beauty, wonder and power of nature is overwhelming and it deserves to be honored like any other famous painting, sculpture, whatever. Also, the experience as the artist creating the work is something of art in and of itself - the methodology in which I have begun to research, collect, gather, photograph, assemble.

Me attempting to speak about his work doesn't necessarily do it justice so I have included some of his quotes from an interview on Art:21 to give a better description of exactly what he is trying to say, that I feel relates 100% to what I am trying, so hard, to say also.

"I think that one of the important things about this work is that it’s really not an intensely positive, back-to-nature kind of experience. In some ways, this project is an abomination. We’re taking a tree that is an ecosystem—a dead tree, but a living system—and we are re-contextualizing it and taking it to another site. We’re putting it in a sort of Sleeping Beauty coffin, a greenhouse we’re building around it. And we’re pumping it up with a life support system—an incredibly complex system of air, humidity, water, and soil enhancement—to keep it going. All those things are substituting what nature does—emphasizing how, once that’s gone, it’s incredibly difficult, expensive, and technological to approximate that system—to take this tree and to build the next generation of forests on it. So this piece is in some way perverse. It shows that, despite all of our technology and money, when we destroy a natural system it’s virtually impossible to get it back. In a sense we’re building a failure."

"I’m interested in thinking about nature as a process. So this isn’t really about the tree, even though the tree is the superstar. It’s really about what’s happening to the tree, about the process of decay. We shouldn’t really feel particularly bound up in the demise of this tree because on this tree is the basis of the next forest. The tree supports a living bio-system, from single-cell organisms all the way up to vertebrates—mice, shrews, and birds. I want this piece to talk to the audience, but not necessarily spoon-feed them or give them what they want. I want to acknowledge or even enhance the uncanniness of nature—the wonder of the vast complexity and diversity within a natural system."

"I’m not sure there is a really succinct way to talk about how this piece politically engages people. In a sense, what I’m doing is bringing a forgotten element of the environment back into the city. I’m taking something that would have existed on that site a long time ago and returning it to that site. But at the same time I’m building a cultural framework around it."

"In some way I want to acknowledge or even enhance the uncanniness of nature and the wonder of the vast complexity and diversity within a natural system. I want to show how difficult it is for us to grasp—not just conceptually, but also practically. How difficult it is for us to figure in all of the variables that you would need to replicate a forest. We’re trying but we can never do it perfectly. That’s one of the most interesting aspects of the piece for me."

"The movement away from superstition and tribalism is an incredibly important factor in the future of our relationship with the planet."

"I think it’s important that the category of nature is not something the field of science has a monopoly on, that everyone has a say in what gets to be nature at a particular time for a particular group of people."