Mark Dion and Alexis Rockman: Journey to Nature’s Underworld
June 24–August 27, 2023, Changing Art Gallery
Mark Dion and Alexis Rockman: Journey to Nature’s Underworld will be the first two-person survey exhibition of these closely allied artists, offering a compelling tour through their celebrated careers and into the shadowy depths of the threatened natural world.
The first two-person survey exhibition of these renowned artists, Mark Dion and Alexis Rockman: Journey to Nature’s Underworld will explore their shared allegiances and sustaining friendship over three decades. Both Dion and Rockman have achieved international prominence for their own distinctive practices. Together they have embarked on tropical expeditions; published dialogues; and co-edited the pioneering 1996 book Concrete Jungle, on anthropogenic ecosystems. Each has probed humankind’s strained relationship with the environment and the consequences of reigning ideologies about nature. Dion and Rockman were among the earliest artists to address, and even anticipate, the epic ecological problems now facing the Earth. Indeed, their vision has become increasingly urgent in this time of environmental collapse.
Although they work in different media, Dion and Rockman engage like-minded approaches and strategies, including intensive research and fieldwork; borrowing scientific methodology and models; and the use of allegory, dark humor, and popular culture tropes. Both artists employ methods of display found in museums of art and natural history, institutions of alleged authority and objectivity, which they slyly subvert in their works. While Dion’s preferred museological modes are taxidermy dioramas and specimen cabinets, Rockman revels in large-scale landscape paintings, densely populated and replete with didactic keys. Like natural history displays and wildlife illustrations, their works are grounded in science and close observation, but presented in a rhetorical, or even theatrical, manner.
Guest curated by Suzanne Ramljak, this exhibition will unite some twenty-five sculptures and paintings by both artists along with related works on paper and a major new collaborative piece, offering an absorbing journey into the depths of the threatened natural world. Beginning with a section evoking the fieldwork of pioneering naturalists and explorers, visitors will encounter a field-station tableaux by Dion alongside Rockman’s paintings of local ecosystems, often with cross-sectioned views. Ensuing works will address such themes as invasive and endangered species, beleaguered aquatic environments, anthropogenic landscapes, and future scenarios evincing effects of climate change and waning biodiversity. An exhibition highlight will be the debut of a grand sculptural diorama, titled American Landscape, created especially for the tour and marking an unprecedented collaboration between Dion and Rockman. This zoological group portrait, set on a golf course, will feature a cast of scrappy species that, according to the artists, successfully “exploit niches and opportunities generated by a human-transformed landscape” representing “the future global ecosystem.” Finally, the exhibition will conclude with a cabinet-of-curiosity created specifically for the Bruce Museum, in which the artists mine the Museum’s collections of science and natural history to explore the work of naturalists and early Bruce Museum curators Paul Griswold Howes and Edward F. Bigelow.
Mark Dion and Alexis Rockman: Journey to Nature’s Underworld is organized by the American Federation of Arts. Support for the exhibition has been provided by Elizabeth Belfer and Victoria E. Triplett.
Alexis Rockman (American, b. 1962)
Departure, 2018
Oil on Dibond aluminum composite sheet
44 x 56 inches
Barbara and Jonathan Lee, Courtesy the artist and American Federation of Arts
Photo: Adam Reich
Mark Dion (American, b. 1961)
Department of Tropical Research—Jungle Station, 2017
Mixed media
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles, and American Federation of Arts
Alexis Rockman (American, b. 1962)
Pioneers, 2017
Oil and alkyd on wood panel
72 in. x 12 ft.
Courtesy the artist, Sperone Westwater Gallery, and American Federation of Arts
Photo: Adam Reich
Mark Dion (American, b. 1961)
Cabinet of Marine Debris, 2014
Wood and metal cabinet, marine debris, plastic, rope
9 ft. 4 in. x 84 x 32 in.
Collection of Martin Z. Margulies, Miami
Courtesy the artist, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles, and American Federation of Arts
Alexis Rockman (American, b. 1962)
The Farm, 2000
Oil and acrylic on wood panel
96 in. x 10 ft.
Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY. Gift of Joy of Giving Something, Inc., New York Courtesy the artist and American Federation of Arts
Photo: Adam Reich
Mark Dion (American, b. 1961)
Concerning the Elephant Bird, 2016
Mixed media
53 1/4 x 39 x 21 inches
Courtesy the artist, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles, and American Federation of Arts
Mark Dion (American, b. 1961) and Alexis Rockman (American, b. 1962)
American Landscape, 2022
96 in. x 16 ft. x 87 in.
Mixed-media diorama with taxidermy, found objects, and painted background, fabricated by Aaron Delehanty and Loud Cow Studio
Courtesy the artists and American Federation of Arts
Photo: Walter Colley; Post-Production: Maria Spinelli
BIGELOW & HOWES: GUIDE FOR THE CURIOUS
The objects on display in this exhibition cabinet of curiosities represent only a small fraction of the life’s work of Edward F. Bigelow and Paul G. Howes, the Bruce Museum’s founding curators.
Click below for a sampling of these objects with details about their creation, use, and acquisition for the Museum’s collection.
Teens @ Bruce
Date: June 24, 2023
Time: 5:00 PM–8:00 PM
Audience: Teens
Cost: Free
Art Adventures: Animal Sketching
Dates: July 15, 2023 and July 16, 2023
Time: 1:00 PM–3:00 PM
Audience: Families/Intergenerational (5 and up)
Cost: Free with admission
Art Adventures: Animal Sketching
Bruce Presents: Unlocking the Cabinet of Curiosities
With Mark Dion, Alexis Rockman, and Tim Walsh
Date: July 18, 2023
Time: 6 PM–7:30 PM
Cost: Non-members $25, Live Stream $25, Students $15, Members Free
Bruce Presents: Unlocking the Cabinet of Curiosities -with Mark Dion, Alexis Rockman, and Tim Walsh
Art Adventures: Create Your Own Diorama
Dates: July 29, 2023 and July 30, 2023
Time: 1:00 PM–3:00 PM
Audience: Families/Intergenerational (5 and up)
Cost: Free with admission
Art Adventures: Create Your Own Dioramas
Teen Workshop: Mark Dion and Alexis Rockman Inspired
Date: August 5, and August 6, 2023
Time: 12:00 PM–3:00 PM
Audience: Teens
Cost: Free with admission
Teen Workshop: Mark Dion and Alexis Rockman Inspired
Art Adventures: Environmental Art
Dates: August 26, 2023 and August 27, 2023
Time: 1:00 PM–3:00 PM
Audience: Families/Intergenerational (5 and up)
Cost: Free with admission
