Mark Dion, b. 1961, lives in Pennsylvania and New York, USA
The “Springhornhof Institute for Palaeolithic Archeology” is an interdisciplinary installation by the artist Mark Dion. The starting point is a collection of Stone Age finds discovered by the enthusiastic amateur archaeologist Wilm Falazik, who opened a gallery at the Springhornhof in the beginning of the sixties, in Neuenkirchen.
On three floors of the historic staircase, Dion installs prehistoric artifacts, archaeological handicrafts, finds, text fragments, and a diorama, together with shaggy mammoths, to an opulent overall staging of scientific principles, personal collection, artistic visions and stereotypes.
Mark Dion is concerned, in his over-arching space-based installations, with our dealings with nature and its representation in science and everyday life, as well as with the complex structures of a historiography created by objects.