October 8 - November 18, 2011

Mark Dion: Process and Inquiry features selections from several bodies of the world-renowned artist’s work, as well as related preparatory drawings, and works made in proposal of a public art piece for the University of Arkansas campus.

Mark Dion’s oeuvre has explored social, historical, and contemporary representations of nature, through collaborative models, group participation, and experiments of co-evolution. His projects illuminate histories of aesthetics and science, examining continuities and ruptures between past and present practices of knowing, ordering, and classifying the material world. With an artistic research process that regularly synthesizes visual and textual information from journals, diaries, and other primary documents, Dion presents us with a keen sense of our contemporary moment. Not allowing us to accept any visual conclusions idly, however, Dion’s work challenges the depths and breadth of our own areas of interest and supposed expertise, including our own particular ethics of learning, teaching, and living.

Dion (b. 1961) is the recipient of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art’s Lucelia Award (2008), a Joan Mitchell Foundation Award (2005), and the ninth annual Larry Aldrich Foundation Award (2001). His work has been shown across the globe, including major exhibitions at the Miami Art Museum (2006); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2004); Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT (2003); and Tate Gallery, London (1999). In 2007, Dion was featured on the PBS series Art 21. Dion is represented by Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, and In Situ Gallery, Paris.

The exhibition, curated by the University of Arkansas’s Alissa Walls, Ph.D, Assistant Professor of Art History, also features a library section, which serves as an introduction for those not as familiar with the artist’s work, as well as an opportunity for those desiring a deeper level of investigation to study further.

Mark Dion, Mobile Ranger Library – Komodo National Park
2008, mixed media, 96 x 84 1/2 x 39 1/2 inches