A Different Order

DBerman Gallery Austin, Texas, 2007

The cabinet of wonder or wunderkammer is a subject that has intrigued me since childhood. Wunderkammers were the early incarnation of the museums we know today. The wonder-cabinets of the 16th and 17th centuries housed diverse and wondrous objects collected by the wealthy. These wonder-cabinets were not collections as we moderns know them—intent upon creating order by systemizing the previously unknown. Rather, their purpose was to showcase the complex collections, regardless of species or category, of the explorer/collector. 

In this  exhibit I have expanded the accepted realm of taxonomies to include the scientific, the plaything, the detritus of decay, and the strange. New categories are framed by the viewer/explorer.