Ecologies: Mark Dion, Peter Fend, Dan Peterman
July 6 – August 27, 2000
Over the past three decades many artists have incorporated ecological concerns into their work. Their projects – which include land art, community-based projects, ephemeral actions, and installations – often have required new strategies of art-making and have activated unconventional sites.
To explore some current manifestations of these interests, the Smart Museum commissioned new projects from Mark Dion (born 1961), Peter Fend (born 1950), and Dan Peterman (born 1960). The three interdisciplinary projects—Dion's Roundup: An Entomological Endeavor for the Smart Museum of Art, Fend's China Basin Plans: The River Dragon Breathes Fire, and Peterman's Excerpts from the Universal Lab—each explored interrelationships between organisms and their surroundings.
By addressing specific sites—a museum building, a river landscape, a university campus—these projects evoked the varied scales—microscopic, global, local—at which human actions affect our surroundings.