Lot 68: Mark Dion (B. 1961)

Massachusetts Botanical Survey wooden shelving, specimens in containers, files, door, sign, plant presses cupboard: 39 1/2 x 71 1/2 x 14 1/2in. (100 x 182 x 37cm.) door: 27 1/8 x 83 x 1 5/8in. (69 x 211 x 4cm.) Executed in 1994. PROVENANCE Galleria Emi Fontana, Milan. LITERATURE L.G. Corrin, M. Kwon and N. Bryson (eds.), 'Mark Dion', London 1997 (illustrated in colour, p. 72). NOTES Mark Dion is fascinated by the natural world and there is nothing he seems to love more than to collect, identify, classify and catalogue the world around him. Unlike many in the scientific fraternity with which he is closely associated, however, he is also profoundly aware that such activity is fundamentally flawed as a means of gaining any real insight into or understanding of Nature. Drawn to the procedural practices of the scientist, the natural historian and even the amateur butterfly collector, Dion creates installations that are both a critique of the inadequacy of such practices and an assertive stance at finding an alternative way in which to perceive and understand the world. "Humans do not stand outside of nature: we, too, are animals, a part of the very thing we tried to control, whether for exploitation or protection. Just as humanity cannot be separated from nature, so our conception of nature cannot be said to stand outside of culture and society. We construct and are constructed by nature." (M. Dion, in: 'A Minifesto', in: 'The Greenhouse Effect', London 2000, p. 66). 'Massachusetts Botanical Survey' is part of an installation collectively known as 'Angelica Point' that Dion created in Italy in 1994. The title, 'Angelica Point', refers to a small peninsula near Boston, Massachusetts, where Dion collected the materials for the installation and forms part of his series of works known as the 'Bureaucracy Series'. Comprising three separate installations that refer to the three disciplines of organisation, namely botany, anthropology and zoology, the 'Angelica Point' works parody the three separate disciplines and their hierarchical structures of classification. 'Massachusetts Botanical Survey' is a painstaking compartmentalisation of the botanical artifacts that Dion collected at Angelica Point and, after having them shipped to Italy, labelled and assembled on site. In using artifacts from a familiar shoreline in America rather than from a local Italian beach, Dion personalises the work and acknowledges his own enjoyment of and connection with this bizarre practice of scientific categorisation and classification.