Experimental Station

Artist Dialogue @ Experimental Station: Floyd Atkins and Dan S. Wang

Saturday, March 24, 2007

12:00 noon - 2:00 pm

Monk Parakeet presents as its inaugural event at the Experimental Station a live dialogue featuring artists Floyd Atkins and Dan S. Wang. This event is co-sponsored by the South Side Community Art Center (SSCAC), and is the first collaboration between it and the Experimental Station. The SSCAC and the Experimental Station each represent an important history outside of the mainstream art world, and each has cultivated its own audience and supporter network over years of activity. This event brings the two together for the first time in the interest of keeping visual arts discourse vital in Chicago, and on the South Side in particular.

The occasion for this live dialogue is Floyd Atkins’ concurrent solo show at the SSCAC, titled Reexamining America’s Misconception. This powerful show of paintings focuses on America’s fear and misreading of black men. The dialogue will take Atkins’ observations as a starting point for discussing the role of fear in our society, the socioeconomic crisis afflicting black men, color lines old and new. From there, the discussion will branch out into questions of artistic influence and method, practical decision-making for working artists, and art world politics. Questions from the audience are encouraged.

About the artists:

Floyd Atkins lives and works in Chicago. He has been painting, drawing and using various forms of mixed media for many years. Floyd is a former art educator in the Chicago Public School system where he proudly brought the creative process to our youth. A graduate of Clark University with a Degree in Fine Art, Floyd studied under the renowned artist John Riddle. He also studied at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and the Art Institute of Chicago, where he lectured on Art History in the early eighties. His work has been purchased by various city government agencies, as well as private collectors such as Master Collector, Paul Jones. Floyd is published in a “How to Book” by the Chinese Government for their students to study. He was recently nominated for the 2003 Joan Mitchell’s Painters and Sculptors Grant. In 2004, Floyd was one of eleven artist from the United States invited to the 8th annual Summer Summit in Poetovio, Slovenia.

Dan S. Wang is an artist and writer who works alone and with groups. In recent years he has exhibited and/or lectured in Portland, San Francisco, Nanjing, Chicago, Baltimore, and Salzburg, Austria. He is the author of the widely disseminated pamphlet Downtime at the Experimental Station. Other writings have appeared in the Journal of Aesthetics & Protest, Art Journal, Art AsiaPacific, WhiteWalls, and many places on-line. He helped to co-found the experimental cultural space Mess Hall, and was educated at Carleton College and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Monk Parakeet is an independent group made up of cultural workers dedicated to producing events and projects that will bring together art, activism, practical skills, and critical dialogue. Dan S. Wang and Faheem Majeed, curator of the SSCAC, are two of the coordinating members.