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May 21, 2012 – Review
Mark Dion’s “Twenty One Years of Think in Three Dimensions”
John Beeson
The title signals the conditions: the exhibition constitutes a loose survey of Mark Dion’s sculptural production dating back more than two decades. And, as evidenced by the ten three-dimensional works, Dion has arranged a world of found objects into scenarios investigating our reality in literal ways. But this description falters: “our reality” is a bit of a stretch, since Dion’s references span fields both broad and narrow—including primarily environmental but also social, political, and art-specific issues. Although the subject matter can feel a bit cumbersome for viewers attuned to sculptural traditions that use found objects in more abstract ways—either in terms of assemblage’s hectic reorganization of materials or the readymade gesture’s transformative effect on use and value—it can nevertheless be said that Dion has taken his responsibility as a critical member of society seriously and that his work, in some moments, offers curious aesthetic expressions.
Vocabulary Lesson for an Election Year (1988), the earliest work in the show, best exemplifies how Dion runs the risk of pedantry; however, the work could also be said to thematize that dynamic by addressing the viewer as a citizen and as a spectator. A notebook lies open on a schoolroom desk. The page is filled …