"I’m constantly going
to flea markets, yard sales, and junk stores and buying things specifically for
projects, but also for myself and my friends. I try to keep these compartments
stable but they tend to blur into one another, so an object may find its way
into a work or into my private collections." Mark Dion
I really love Mark Dion's work in The Curiosity Shop. It is a seemingly simple idea of a shop of loosely connected collections of things from books to matches to stuffed animals. These loosely assembled categories create an almost false antique shop yet it doesn't completely try avoid verisimilitude.'Keys hang near the shop-owners desk like they
would in a real shop. There is a desk and chair for the make believe owner to
sit at. There is a magnifying light on the desk for the proprietor to examine
goods with. The simple interior and exterior design of the shop is meant to
suggest a real place.' (Eric Gelber, 01/12/05)
To me The Curiosity Shop brings to lights elements of human behavior our fascination with endlessly searching in junk shops for lost beauty, a past life. What are we looking for? 'We are supposed to look at the groupings of things and wonder
if they symbolize some concept or idea and why groupings are juxtaposed.'(Eric Gelber, 01/12/05)
Dion's shop reinforces Heisenbergian concept that “the very act of
observing alters the object being observed.” We are forced to be observers (you cant touch anything in the shop) unsettling our desire to satisfy our hunt for a lost items that we don't really need. I think the relationship between all these items is forming a feeling of nostalgia from the consumer.
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