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Edgar Arceneaux — Class Photos. Jesus of Nazareth. (Crucifixion Jesus)
Edgar Arceneaux

Class Photos. Jesus of Nazareth. (Crucifixion Jesus)

2016

Class Photos. Jesus of Nazareth. (Crucifixion Jesus) presents a haunting convergence of the sacred and the institutional, rendered in ink on dry erase board and mirrored glass within a wooden frame. Arceneaux depicts a figure drawn from one of history's most recognizable iconographies, yet positions this image within the mundane grammar of the school portrait, a format associated with social sorting, collective memory, and the bureaucratic cataloguing of identity. The dry erase board as support carries its own charged significance, evoking spaces of instruction and erasure, where knowledge is both transmitted and impermanent. The mirrored glass introduces the viewer's own reflection into the composition, collapsing the distance between observer and observed, between contemporary life and a figure whose image has been reproduced and reinterpreted across two millennia. Arceneaux, who works across installation, drawing, film, and performance, consistently investigates how historical narratives are constructed, distorted, and handed down through cultural and political systems. This work sits comfortably within that broader inquiry, asking how Western civilization has chosen to picture, frame, and institutionalize its central spiritual figure. The "class photo" format implies a cohort, a sequence, a bureaucratic logic applied to divinity itself, and that friction generates the work's quiet but persistent conceptual tension. At 39 by 31 centimeters, the piece operates on an intimate scale, demanding close engagement and rewarding sustained looking. Signed by the artist and currently offered through Galerie Nathalie Obadia, this is a carefully resolved work that speaks to Arceneaux's most enduring concerns with representation, history, and the constructed image.

Medium
Ink drawing on dry erase board and Mirrored Glass, varnish, in wooden frame
Overall
Signed
Yes

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About this work

Edgar Arceneaux, Class Photos. Jesus of Nazareth. (Crucifixion Jesus) , 2016

Class Photos. Jesus of Nazareth. (Crucifixion Jesus) presents a haunting convergence of the sacred and the institutional, rendered in ink on dry erase board and mirrored glass within a wooden frame. Arceneaux depicts a figure drawn from one of history's most recognizable iconographies, yet positions this image within the mundane grammar of the school portrait, a format associated with social sorting, collective memory, and the bureaucratic cataloguing of identity. The dry erase board as support carries its own charged significance, evoking spaces of instruction and erasure, where knowledge is both transmitted and impermanent. The mirrored glass introduces the viewer's own reflection into the composition, collapsing the distance between observer and observed, between contemporary life and a figure whose image has been reproduced and reinterpreted across two millennia. Arceneaux, who works across installation, drawing, film, and performance, consistently investigates how historical narratives are constructed, distorted, and handed down through cultural and political systems. This work sits comfortably within that broader inquiry, asking how Western civilization has chosen to picture, frame, and institutionalize its central spiritual figure. The "class photo" format implies a cohort, a sequence, a bureaucratic logic applied to divinity itself, and that friction generates the work's quiet but persistent conceptual tension. At 39 by 31 centimeters, the piece operates on an intimate scale, demanding close engagement and rewarding sustained looking. Signed by the artist and currently offered through Galerie Nathalie Obadia, this is a carefully resolved work that speaks to Arceneaux's most enduring concerns with representation, history, and the constructed image.

Medium
Ink drawing on dry erase board and Mirrored Glass, varnish, in wooden frame
Dimensions
overall: 39 x 31 x 3.8 cm
Year
2016
Signed
Hand-signed by the artist
Seen at
Galerie Nathalie Obadia

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