UA Fine Arts Center Gallery to exhibit work by acclaimed artist Mark Dion

Courtesy photo
Mobile Ranger Library – Komodo National Park 2008, mixed media, 96 x 84 1/2 x 39 1/2 inches.

It is not very often that work by an artist as world renowned as Mark Dion comes to Fayetteville.

It just so happens, however, that several works by Dion will be exhibited in town next month, and that one piece by the acclaimed New York artist will soon find a permanent home in Fayetteville.

The University of Arkansas Fine Arts Center Gallery hosts the show entitled, “Mark Dion: Process and Inquiry” beginning Oct. 8. The exhibition features selections from several bodies of Dion’s work, including three pieces made in proposal for a new public art piece for the University of Arkansas campus. One piece is expected to be selected by the UA’s Public Art Oversight Advisory Committee for permanent display on campus.

Here’s how the UA Fine Arts Gallery describe Mark’s work:

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 has won multiple awards for his work, including 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.

The local exhibition, curated by the UA’s Alissa Walls Mazow, 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.

The exhibition opens Saturday, Oct. 8, and continues through Nov. 18.

Opening day hours are from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. After that, regular gallery hours are from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, and from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday.

Mark Dion – “Methodology”