Art talk: Mark Dion
Photo: Jorge Colombo
Mark 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. 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.
Mark Dion, born 1961, opens his exhibition Systema Naturae with drawings, prints, and sculptures at Saskia Neumann Gallery in Stockholm on March 23.
Systema Naturae is one of the major works of the Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician Carl von Linné (1707–1778) and introduced the Linnaean taxonomy - a rank-based classification of organisms. Find Saskia Neuman Gallery at Linnégatan!
Dante´s Dog, 2021, by Mark Dion.