Ordinal of Alchemy
Cabinet magazine writes...
The exhibition inaugurates "999," an occasional series of exhibitions presented by Cabinet in which artists are invited to assemble work under a single constraint: everything installed in the gallery must have been acquired on Ebay for a total of less than $999. When the exhibition comes down, its contents are offered for sale as a single item, once again on Ebay.
In 2009, Mark Dion, Robert Williams, and their students at the Pennsylvania artists’ colony Mildred’s Lane used Cabinet’s invitation as an opportunity to explore the theme of alchemical transformation. “An Ordinall of Alchimy” comprises the objects they assembled, a collection keyed to the seven basic processes of practical alchemy: Calcination, Fixation, Solution, Distillation, Sublimation, Separation, and Projection.