
Class Photos. Abraham Lincoln (In the Livingroom)
2016
Class Photos. Abraham Lincoln (In the Livingroom) presents a quietly unsettling meditation on history, memory, and the surfaces through which both are refracted. Arceneaux has rendered his subject in ink on a dry erase board, a material that carries an implicit impermanence, the suggestion that what has been written can always be wiped away. The inclusion of mirrored glass sealed beneath varnish and set within a wooden frame adds a further layer of complexity, positioning the viewer as a literal presence within the composition. Looking at Lincoln is also, unavoidably, looking at oneself, a doubling that collapses the distance between historical myth and present reckoning. Arceneaux is known for his rigorous interrogation of American ideology, and this work channels that inquiry through the intimate scale and vernacular warmth of a class photo, a format associated with community, documentation, and the preservation of collective identity. The domestic qualifier in the title, "In the Livingroom," relocates one of the most mythologized figures in American political history to an everyday interior, suggesting both the familiarity with which that mythology is absorbed and the ways it quietly persists in private life. The dry erase board, a fixture of classrooms and offices, reinforces this tension between the official and the provisional. At 31 by 39 centimeters, the work operates at an intimate, almost portable scale that rewards close attention. Signed by the artist and currently held by Galerie Nathalie Obadia, it represents a compelling entry point into Arceneaux's broader practice for collectors seeking work that is formally precise, conceptually layered, and rooted in an urgent and ongoing conversation about American history and its contested legacies.
- Medium
- Ink drawing on dry erase board and Mirrored Glass, varnish, in wooden frame
- Overall
- Signed
- Yes
- Spotted At
- Gallery · Galerie Nathalie Obadia
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