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MarK Dion
pigeon tarer, June 2009
Articulated pigeon skeleton coated with tar, mounted on a wooden crate
17.5 x 10 x 13 cm (pigeon); 101 x 31 x 34 cm (crate)
Signed & numbered edition of 8, 2 A/P
Image courtesy the artist and Bywater Bros. Editions, Toronto
ESTIMATE: $3,000-4,000
Mark Dion is an American artist whose work incorporates aspects of archaeology, ecology and detection. He is fascinated by the principles of taxonomy, the systems of classification by which people have sought to bring order to the world. Dion has been particularly influenced by the work undertaken by nineteenth-century naturalists, such as Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace, co-founders of the theory of natural selection, as well as the contemporary evolutionary theorist Stephen Jay Gould, who points out that all taxonomic systems are rooted within our social structures. By adopting the role of the archaeologist and re-enacting the very processes of traditional scientific research, Dion investigates the premises upon which these activities are based.
Pigeon Tarer is part of a series of taxonomic skeletal reconstructions of North American animals by Dion. Covered in tar, they suggest archaeological recovery as well as museological display. Additionally Pigeon Tarer conflates the death of a common urban denizen with our memory of one of the first documented extinctions caused by human intervention, the Passenger Pigeon.
Mark Dion was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1961. He received a BFA (1986) and an honorary doctorate (2003) from the University of Hartford School of Art, Connecticut. He has received numerous awards, including the ninth annual Larry Aldrich Foundation Award (2001) and has had major exhibitions at the Miami Art Museum (2006); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2004); Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut (2003); and Tate Gallery, London (1999). “Neukom Vivarium” (2006), a permanent outdoor installation and learning lab for the Olympic Sculpture Park, was commissioned by the Seattle Art Museum. Dion lives and works in Pennsylvania.
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