MARK DION

American, b. 1975

The Field Station of the Melancholy Marine Biologist, 2018

Mixed-media installation
16 ft. 2 ¾ in. x 24 ft. 1 ½ in. x 9 ft. (494.7 x 735.3 x 274.3 cm)
Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York

The Field Station of the Melancholy Marine Biologist appears to be a laboratory that has been temporarily vacated by the scientist who uses it. A lifelong collector, Mark Dion has accumulated imagined belongings of a marine biologist for this structure, which is intended to be experienced only voyeuristically, through the windows and doors. Dion, who attributes his artistic motivation to “an appreciation, a love, an awe of the natural world,” here asks viewers to enter the workday of a marine biologist, whose daily collection, study, and interpretation of a natural world threatened by climate change may leave him or her with a sense of despair. As Dion has stated, “It is a space that embodies a moment where someone studying the natural world realizes that the future’s not looking so good. . . . It would be hard to study these things and not come to the conclusion that we are going to lose a great amount of the natural wonders that have been here in previous centuries.”