Bio
Danny Floyd is an artist, researcher, curator, and educator based out of Chicago. He holds a BFA in Photography from RISD, an MA in Visual & Critical Studies, and an MFA in Sculpture both from SAIC. He is the Exhibitions Director for ACRE and a Lecturer of Visual & Critical Studies and Sculpture at SAIC.
Since 2013, he has been an active part of Chicago's artist-run space community through two programs, Ballroom Projects and Adler & Floyd. He has held curatorial residencies with ACRE and Chicago Artists Coalition. He was also awarded the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation Curatorial Fellowship in 2017. He has attended studio residencies at ACRE; AS220 in Providence, RI; and Earthbound Moon in Eugene, OR. Danny represents the Part-Time faculty as Lecturer Rep, attending Faculty Business Senate and serving on various committees and working groups.
Personal Statement
At the risk of confusion, Danny's studio work seeks the narrow threshold between meaning and nonsense in text and images. Often at odds with neuro-normative conventions, he embraces divergent thinking through improvisation and the delightfully weird. His conceptual process foregrounds reading and listening practices as cultural production rather than passive reception. His curatorial area of expertise in installation sculpture. His writing practice is closely tied to his curatorial practice, devising exhibition themes driven by research and guided by collaborative conversation with exhibiting artists.
In the classroom, Danny often teaches through questions. Questions challenge the student, pushing them to think deeply and critically while still treating them with empathy without, as sculptor Robert Irwin put it, "hav[ing] have ambitions for someone else’s mind." Danny's courses explore creative and critical approaches to understanding the cultural role of music, architecture and the built environment, and exhibition making. Danny also routinely teaches Thesis Tutorial, and Junior seminar which teachers research, writing, and editing practices to prepare students to write a Senior Thesis on the VCS track.
Disclaimer: All work represents the views of the INDIVIDUAL ARTISTS & AUTHORS who created them, and are not those of the school or museum of the Art Institute.
