Mark Dion and Alexis Rockman: Journey to Nature's Underworld: The Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT
The Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT is the first venue to showcase Mark Dion and Alexis Rockman: Journey to Nature’s Underworld, a new traveling exhibition surveying 30 years of both artists’ work, now open and on view through August 27, 2023. The exhibition is the first two-person survey of these renowned artists and will explore their shared allegiances and sustaining friendship over three decades. Mark Dion and Alexis Rockman: Journey to Nature’s Underworld is guest curated by Suzanne Ramljak and organized by the American Federation of Arts.
Both Dion and Rockman have achieved international prominence for their own distinctive practices. Together they have embarked on tropical expeditions; published dialogues; and coedited 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.
As a community-based, world-class institution that highlights art, science, and natural history, the Bruce Museum is uniquely suited to launch Mark Dion and Alexis Rockman: Journey to Nature’s Underworld, which features some twenty-five sculptures and paintings that explore the artists’ aesthetic strategies for engaging viewers with today’s pressing ecological challenges. 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
visible environmental collapse.
The Bruce Museum is the only venue on this nationwide tour to feature a new, collaborative installation mining the Museum’s extensive holdings and archival material devoted to founding curators and naturalists Edward F. Bigelow and Paul G. Howes. Comprised of dioramas, microscopes, personal items, artwork, and photographic scrapbooks, as well as taxidermy and mineral specimens, this cabinet of curiosity charts both the history of the Museum and the evolving trajectory of its natural history and science collections.
Margarita Karasoulas, the Bruce Museum’s Curator of Art, notes “Both artists’ practices are rooted in scientific concerns and probe humankind’s relationship to nature. Together, the artists not only grapple with the most pressing issues of our time related to global warming and environmental and ecological change but also interrogate the very history of the scientific discipline. We are particularly thrilled to work with both artists to realize a cabinet of curiosities showcasing an array of objects from the Museum’s collection.”
Mark Dion and Alexis Rockman: Journey to Nature’s Underworld is organized by the American Federation of Arts and curated by Suzanne Ramljak. Support for the exhibition has been provided by Elizabeth Belfer and Victoria E. Triplett.
This exhibition was organized by the American Federation of Arts and will travel to the following venues:
- Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT, June 24 – August 27, 2023
- Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach, VA, February 8 – June 9, 2024
- The Tang Museum at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, July 13, 2024 – January 5, 2025
- Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Miami, FL, February 13 – July 20, 2025
- Palmer Art Museum, Penn State, University, PA, August 23 – December 7, 2025
Image 1: The Department of Tropical Research: jungle field station, 2017, at The Drawing Center, NY, 2017. Photo: Martin Parsekian.
Image 2: Nature Morte, 2018.
Image 3: Installation View, Mark Dion and Alexis Rockman: Journey to Nature's Underworld, The Bruce Museum, 2023.
Image 4: Mark Dion & Alexis Rockman, American Landscape, 2022, fabricated by Aaron Delehanty and Loud Cow Studio. Courtesy the artists and American Federation of Arts. Photo: Walter Colley; Post-Production: Maria Spinelli.
