18th Street Arts Center

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By admin, February 11, 2010 3:13 am

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).

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By rlopez, September 27, 2008 3:54 pm

WAR AS A WAY OF LIFE (The Future of Nations- Part Four “War”)

Guest curated by Clayton Campbell

September 27 – December 19, 2008

Artists:
Susan Crile
Binh Danh
Barry Frydlender
Cindy Kane
Hometown Baghdad
Marty Horowitz
Ronald Lopez
Christine McPhee
Catherine Opie
Stacy Peralta
David Reeb
Sinan Leong Revell
Daniel Ruanova
Larry Scarpa
Mark Spencer
and:
Amitis Motevalli , 18th Street Artist Fellow

IT SEEMS LIKE I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN FIGHTING SOME KIND OF WAR.

I was 18 years old in 1969, and my draft number was 31. That fatal number (for those who didn’t want to be drafted) began my involvement in anti-war activities, and supporting a national agenda of peace. I have always been in the opposition, it seems, because the wars just keep coming. Because I am a’ person of conscience’ the specter and reality of war has threaded through my life in ways that have changed who I am and how I view the world, and how I interact with persons around me.In “War As A Way of Life” I am looking at the phenomena of how people who are exposed to long term effects of war change and mutate and perhaps become something else altogether. Yesterday Ingmar Bergman died, and I recalled his movie, “Shame.” It was his provocative answer to the Vietnam war, depicting how ordinary, civilized people are transformed when war suddenly overtakes them. This is the kind of sensibility I am hoping to bring to “War As A Way of Life”, to look at how different communities respond to conflict as a constant refrain in their daily lives.

War can be in Iraq, it can be in our own city, it can be in our heads. Whether it is a mis- -begotten foreign adventure run by incompetent politicians and corrupt industrialists, a neighborhood terrified of the gangs that control it, or our own psyches polluted with media images of slashers, serial killers, and action stars, violence is transformative. The responses are varied, and I will be asking the artists in the project to look closely at their personal, very human responses. In terms of the overall project at 18th Street, ‘Future of Nations’ of which “War As A Way of Life is one of the themes, an understanding of what is happening to our collective psyche is critical to transformative change which is positive and proactive.

– Clayton Campbell

Visit War as a Way of Life’s site here