Review: Mark Dion tackles extinction in his art—and offers neither false hope nor despondency
LA TimesMark Dion makes chart-like drawings and boxed-display sculptures of artifacts that initially seem to be rigorous accumulations of scientific knowledge. Epic historical events like the Furisode fire, which destroyed two-thirds of Japan’s capital city Edo in 1657, killing 100,000 people, or the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, which set the stage for Russia’s current blood-soaked war in Ukraine three decades later, suddenly seem puny in the larger scheme of planetary passages. A carefully cataloged and arrayed “Cabinet of Marine Debris: East Coast/West Coast” turns an aristocratic 17th century cabinet of curiosities on its head, transforming a showcase of exotic wonderment into a stolid inventory of dismay. Dion offers neither false hope nor despondency, just hard-nosed resolution.
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