Exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with show held May 16 - June 29, 1991. Text by Cornelia [Connie] Butler. Artists include Chelo Amezcua, Prophet William J. Blackmon, Freddie Brice, Ray Hamilton, Bessie Harvey, Asterios Matakos, and Phillip Travers. Includes images, artist biographies, and quotes from interviews for some of the included artists.
"As an alternative space, Artists Space has for seventeen years been committed to dissolving the many boundaries historically present in the art world-boundaries established to exclude certain art and artists from the 'mainstream' culture. By consistently exhibiting the work of people of color, unknown emerging artists and work with difficult scale and uncommodifiable concepts, Artists Space has insisted that the "mainstream" concept of contemporary art and art history is a bankrupt one. It is my hope that the whole notion of the mainstream be dissolved and that we begin to look at the range of human 'art' production with fresh eyes-—not to ghettoize what we see with elitist categories like folk, outsider, primitive, ethnographic etc. By exhibiting the work of untrained, non-art educated artists that "mainstream" concept is further dissolved. This show is one of many before and many to follow which forces us to look and not to name. I am convinced that through looking we can recognize a vision of power and quality." -- from Gregory Amenoff's introduction.