Hello everyone,

my name is Dario Ré and I am an artist, father, student and mushroom enthusiast living in Montréal. I’m entering my second year of an M.A. in Art History at Concordia University and am writing a thesis on mushrooms and relational art. I’m specifically interested in the notion of symbiosis and the metaphors that exists between the mycorrhizal relationships in forest ecology and the relational/social/community element of contemporary art practices.

I am delighted to have been invited by Diane to join and help facilitate the mushroom foray on October 7th and am looking forward to meeting all of you. I can’t think of a better way to get to know each other than to spend an afternoon looking for mushrooms. I will bring some extra field guides to cross-reference our findings and will take some time to share an element of my research while we’re in the field.

This morning I published the beginning of a web project called Mushroom Resource that I hope to develop as a visual supplement to my research. You will find a collection of artworks that engage with mushrooms in one way or another. They are organized by taxonomic family (ex. Amanitaceae). So please browse the images and if there are specific projects that strike your interest shoot me a line and I’ll be sure to touch on those during our time together. Enjoy!

See you next week!