RIDGEFIELD, CONNECTICUT.- The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art opened Mark Dion: Full House, the first major New York area solo exhibition of this internationally-recognized American artist, on view through April 27, 2003. As recipient of the prestigious 2001 Larry Aldrich Foundation Award, Dion was presented with $25,000 in October of 2001 and given the opportunity to mount a new exhibition at The Aldrich.
Full House will include seven major installations; a selection of over eighty drawings; a collection of the artist’s journals from 1990 to the present; and a 1,000 cubic-foot Vivarium—a 22-foot-long fallen tree that has been harvested from a local forest and placed in a vitrine along with the moss, lichen, and insects that naturally inhabit a rotting log. The exhibition will celebrate Dion’s unique approach to contemporary art, which reexamines the role that museums play in the presentation and interpretation of the natural world.
"I am so excited to have this opportunity to articulate the breadth of my work here in the United States,” Dion told The Aldrich. “I have already had a number of survey exhibitions in Europe, and while I’ve had lots of smaller museum and gallery exhibitions in the U.S., the Aldrich exhibition is my first major survey exhibition in this country. What’s more, The Aldrich is a perfect place for the exhibition. It is not the standard white box and my work is anything but the norm."
Dion has been producing artworks that blur the boundaries between natural history, art, and science since the 1980s. His installations critique the cataloguing and presentation of artistic and historical material in western museums, exploring themes as diverse as archaeology, consumer culture, ecology, environmentalism, and political activism.
This exhibition marks the first time that a comprehensive selection of Dion’s works on paper will be on public view, with over eighty drawings exhibited in a salon-style installation in The Aldrich’s historic 1783 building. Also on view will be a selection of the artist’s journals and notebooks filled with sketches, postcards, photographs and illustrations, providing insight into Dion’s working process and his investigation of themes that are subsequently developed in his complex multimedia installations. Images in the drawings include curiosity cabinets, archeological excavations, birds, insects, and various flora and fauna.
RIDGEFIELD, CONNECTICUT.- The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art opened Mark Dion: Full House, the first major New York area solo exhibition of this internationally-recognized American artist, on view through April 27, 2003. As recipient of the prestigious 2001 Larry Aldrich Foundation Award, Dion was presented with $25,000 in October of 2001 and given the opportunity to mount a new exhibition at The Aldrich.
Full House will include seven major installations; a selection of over eighty drawings; a collection of the artist’s journals from 1990 to the present; and a 1,000 cubic-foot Vivarium—a 22-foot-long fallen tree that has been harvested from a local forest and placed in a vitrine along with the moss, lichen, and insects that naturally inhabit a rotting log. The exhibition will celebrate Dion’s unique approach to contemporary art, which reexamines the role that museums play in the presentation and interpretation of the natural world.
"I am so excited to have this opportunity to articulate the breadth of my work here in the United States,” Dion told The Aldrich. “I have already had a number of survey exhibitions in Europe, and while I’ve had lots of smaller museum and gallery exhibitions in the U.S., the Aldrich exhibition is my first major survey exhibition in this country. What’s more, The Aldrich is a perfect place for the exhibition. It is not the standard white box and my work is anything but the norm."
Dion has been producing artworks that blur the boundaries between natural history, art, and science since the 1980s. His installations critique the cataloguing and presentation of artistic and historical material in western museums, exploring themes as diverse as archaeology, consumer culture, ecology, environmentalism, and political activism.
This exhibition marks the first time that a comprehensive selection of Dion’s works on paper will be on public view, with over eighty drawings exhibited in a salon-style installation in The Aldrich’s historic 1783 building. Also on view will be a selection of the artist’s journals and notebooks filled with sketches, postcards, photographs and illustrations, providing insight into Dion’s working process and his investigation of themes that are subsequently developed in his complex multimedia installations. Images in the drawings include curiosity cabinets, archeological excavations, birds, insects, and various flora and fauna.
Born in Fairhaven, Massachusetts (adjacent to the industrial seaport of New Bedford) in 1961, Mark Dion credits his mother’s interest in antiques with the development of his own curiosity about the aesthetics and history of objects. Dion attended the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford, CT, before moving to New York City, where he attended the School of the Visual Arts and the Whitney Independent Program. Subsequent travels to Central America and throughout Europe solidified Dion’s interest in biological and historical sciences.
Dion has had numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the world, including those at: Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; P.S. 1 Museum for Contemporary Art, Long Island City, NY; the Tate Gallery, London; the Nordic Pavilion at the 1997 Venice Biennale; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
