The Dikeou Collection is pleased to welcome San Antonio author and artist, Chad Dawkins, to Denver for a special author talk about his newest book, The Role of the Artist in Contemporary Art. A series of drawings by Dawkins is on view at the collection, and his project “What is a Curator?” appeared in issue 23 of zingmagazine. The talk will take place on Saturday, July 18, from 2:00 to 4:00pm at the Dikeou Collection, 1615 California St, Suite 515. This event is free and open to the public with light refreshments provided.
Chad Dawkins is an artist and critic living in San Antonio, Texas. His work has been shown throughout the US, and he has written for several Texas arts publications, and is a current contributor to glasstire.com. He is currently researching contemporary art language and holds an MA from the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. He ran for mayor of his home town, Lubbock, Texas. He is fond of sandwiches for any meal of the day. The following are his statements regarding his artwork at Dikeou Collection, his project in zingmagazine, and his new book which he will discuss:
“The work in the Dikeou Collection is an example of the work I do questioning the role of the work of art. The drawings came at a time when I was interested in the boundaries of original and reproduced imagery. For the iteration that is the botanical drawings series, I wanted to play up the fact that they are graphite reproductions (drawings) of photo-litho prints made from (I assume) drawings as seen through a microscope in the 19th century. So my question was: where did the original-reproduction begin in this chain of events.
The “What is a Curator?” collection came about specifically because I was asked to curate a show–something I didn’t feel all that wild about. I began to think about what kind of show to put together, and all sorts of ‘curatorial’ questions about content, agency, politics, identity and stupid stuff like that. Then it occurred to me to question the role of the curator and curation. I turned to as many people as I could to help me flesh out the role of the curator through a questionnaire. All of the submissions were presented as the show I curated and then happily it was reproduced for zingmagazine.
The Role of the Artist in Contemporary Art follows the previous work as an attempt to define the role the artist plays in contemporary art. These roles are significant to me in that I have witnessed a shift in the power dynamics at work within the art world since the start of the century. The text is an effort to label the tendencies of artists working in an ever-expanding field of potential.”