Mark Dion Q&A follows

Dion first exhibited at the Wex soon after it opened, participating in the 1990 exhibition Biodiversity along with William Schefferine. He returned in 1997 with the solo exhibition Cabinet of Curiosities for the Wexner Center for the Arts. 
 
Throughout his career, Dion has investigated classification, constructions of knowledge, intersecting histories, and ideologies about the natural world. Drawing on a wide range of institutions, cultural practices, and research traditions, Dion creates sculptures and installations that examine how objects are collected, preserved, organized, and interpreted. Audiences will gain insight into his research-based process and the ideas that inform his work. 
 
Using both scholarly inquiry and mischievous humor, Dion invites viewers to rethink their assumptions about authority and knowledge. As Elisa Carollo wrote in an interview with Dion for Observer, when visitors encounter his installations, “What initially appears rigorously scientific—orderly, methodical, authoritative—gradually reveals its fiction the longer one remains inside. ‘I often think of these installations as crime scenes,’ Dion notes, ‘where the viewer becomes the detective.’”

"I think curiosity sets off a chain reaction: curiosity leads to wonder, and wonder eventually leads to knowledge." Mark Dion in an interview with Elisa Carollo for Observer