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New visual works by Mark Steven Greenfield

Curated by Julie Joyce

September 29 - November 30, 2007
ArtNight Reception event: Saturday, September 29, 5:00 - 8:30pm
1639 18th Street, Santa Monica

 

 

18th Street Arts Center presents “Incognegro,” a solo exhibition of visual works by Mark Steven Greenfield and curated by Julie Joyce, September 29-November 30, 2007. The ArtNight reception event will be held September 29, 2007, 5:00-8:30 pm, including two free concerts, additional and open studios by international and local artists. Gallery hours are Monday-Friday, 11am-5:30pm. 18th Street Arts Center is located at 1639 18th Street, Santa Monica.

“Incognegro” includes multimedia photographs, paintings, and sculptures that appropriate and represent historic minstrel images and critiques race issues that are apparent through blackface performance. “Incognegro” features 14 new works by Greenfield made over the past four years that have not been previously exhibited in Los Angeles that flirt with the line between racism and political correctness. The exhibition includes a new series of lenticular prints that play with layers of meaning by juxtaposing minstrel portraits and various patterns that can be discovered simultaneously or separately depending upon the viewer’s physical relationship to each work. Crazy Eights (2007) is a series of eight new paintings featuring iconic accoutrements from vintage minstrel “how to” guides that, repeated eight times, simulate patterns that both highlight and sublimate the inherent satire of each object. Also featured are two arresting photographic portraits of Aaron and Jason White, performers in the latter’s “The Dance: The History of American Minstrelsy,” an educational play regarding the history of minstrelsy in America; as well as a series of motorized outdoor sculptures that literally inflate the artist’s distinctive forms of provocation.

Mark Steven Greenfield’s multimedia photographs, paintings and sculptures offer a contemporary critique of race through the exploration of one of America’s infamously controversial forms of entertainment: Black-face performance. Appropriating and representing historic minstrel images, Greenfield simultaneously exposes the spectacle of an era while reclaiming an essentially white construct. Determinedly confrontational, yet in ways that are as conspicuous as they are subversive, this work not only questions but struts the line between what is racist and what is politically correct.

Mark Steven Greenfield received his BA in Education at California State University, Long Beach and his MFA at California State University, Los Angeles. His most recent solo exhibitions include Post Minstrel at Steve Turner Gallery in Beverly Hills (2004), Blackatcha at Reginald Ingraham Gallery in Los Angeles (2000) and Project Row Houses in Houston, Texas. His work has been included in many important group exhibitions, including Whiteness: A Wayward Construction, Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, California (2003) and the University of Virginia Museum in Charlottesville (2004); African American Artists in Los Angeles: Fade (1990-2003), at the Luckman Gallery, Cal State L.A. (2004); Only Skin Deep, International Center for Photography, New York (2004); Color, Culture and Complexity at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia in Atlanta (2002); Affirming A Visual Heritage at the California African-American Museum in Los Angeles (1996); and in other exhibitions at venues including the Santa Monica Museum of Art (1992), the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena (1990), and the historic Brockman Gallery in Los Angeles (1978).

Julie Joyce (Curator) is Gallery Director of the Luckman Fine Arts Complex at the California State University, Los Angeles, a position she has held since 1998. She received her MA in Art History and Museum Studies at the University of Southern California. Joyce has worked at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the Las Angeles County Museum of Art, the Santa Monica Museum of Art, and the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation. As an independent writer, Joyce has published reviews and articles in Art Issues and Artext magazines and has contributed to catalogues published by the MIT Press, Studio Museum in Harlem, Museum of Modern Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Pomona College Art Museum, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, University of Southern California, and Luckman Gallery.

 

CURATOR STATEMENT | VIEWER RESPONSES | CONVERSATION WITH ARTIST | GALLERY

 

LINKS
Students In Blackface "Jena 6" Reenactment

 

18th Street programs are supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, Asian Cultural Council, Australia Council on the Arts, California Community Foundation, Council for Cultural Affairs Taiwan, Getty Foundation, James Irvine Foundation, Jewish Federation of Los Angeles, Jumex Foundation, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, National Endowment for the Arts, Santa Monica Cultural Affairs Division, and the Trust for Mutual Understanding.

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