Mark Dion

For more than 20 years, American artist Mark Dion has had archive fever. Organized according to a quirky system of categorization, his tableaux of dusty collections consist of stuffed bears, tarred birds and scientific tools, which are exhibited on tables, piled in corners or arranged on the floor. Borrowing their methodologies from paleontology or archeology, Dion's installations, interventions, performances and photographs critique how our culture reconciles its coexistence with nature, while at the same time revealing nature as a construct that is constantly being reshaped and reinterpreted. This publication provides a detailed look at Concerning Hunting, Dion's most recent project, an examination of the controversial cultural practice, in which Dion grapples with hunting's fundamental contradiction: the hunter's sensitivity to the balance of nature is cultivated as a means to becoming more skilled at finding and killing his prey.