Los Angeles-based artist Edgar Arceneaux, whose work explores the relationship between art and social space, will be the featured guest speaker at the Corcoran’s Graduation Ceremony on May 14. A graduate of the Art Center College of Design and the California Institute of the Arts, where he received a BFA and MFA respectively, Arceneaux’s drawings, installations, video and film works examine disparate histories.
Solo exhibitions of Arceneaux’s work have been presented at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles; the Kitchen in New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York and the Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Basel, Switzerland.
Arceneaux has also participated in artist residencies at the Robert Rauschenberg Residency on Captiva Island, Florida; Art Pace in San Antonio, Texas; and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.
"PLATONIC SOLID’S DREAMING/DETROIT’S SHRINKING" by Edgar Arceneaux (Photo courtesy of the artist and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects)
Most recently Arceneaux work was included in "Marking Time" at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia; "Mutatis, Mutandis," at the Vienna Secession in Austria; the 2008 Whitney Biennial in New York; La Biennale de Montreal 2014; and the 2015 Shanghai Biennale.
Beyond the studio, Arceneaux has collaborated with the U.S. State Department and the country of Sao Tome, Africa; Beyond Entertainment, a new educational web and TV series; and a recent community-based project in the Edgehill community of Nashville, Tennessee. Last fall, Arceneaux received Performa 15’s Malcolm McLaren Award for his first live work Until, Until, Until … , an examination of the infamous televised performance of Broadway legend Ben Vereen’s homage to vaudeville performer Bert Williams during the 1981 inaugural celebration for President Ronald Reagan.