Visual artist Edgar Arceneaux was born in 1972 in Los Angeles, where he continues to live and work. A graduate of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the California Institute of Arts and also studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine and at the Fachhochschule Aachen in Germany. He has been featured in numerous group exhibitions in galleries and museums and has had twelve solo exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe including those at the Studio Museum in Harlem and the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. In his drawings, sculptures, and installations, Arceneaux pushes the viewer to find unexpected connections and relationships between words, places, and ideas.
The Joyce Award supported Gallery 400 in commissioning Arceneaux to create a short 35- mm film installation entitled The Alchemy of Comedy. The subject of the film is a performance of jokes, puns, one-liners, and witticisms performed by comedian David Allen Grier. Gallery 400 and Arceneaux invited students from UIC and two schools from the Alternative Schools Network, Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School and Westside Alternative High School, to participate as both film crew and audience. The project was presented from April to June 2005 and included shooting the film in the gallery with a live audience and coinciding with the ArtChicago and Chicago Contemporary and Classic art fairs.