The Alchemy of Comedy...Stupid

Centered on a lushly colored, multi-channel video featuring wildly popular comedian David Alan Grier, The Alchemy of Comedy...Stupid examined the nuances and structures, rapture and pathos of jokes, comedy routines and the relationship between performer and audience. By destabilizing our familiarity with the joke and its context, Arceneaux revealed existing but rarely acknowledged possibilities for unique, coherent meaning created from non-linear logic.

Intercut among the multiple screens are reconfigured video segments of Grier debuting poignantly difficult material, his interactions with audience members and awkward moments of anticipation or rumination. The video and a single-channel companion piece were shot in Chicago in May 2005 primarily on the UIC campus. They and accompanying works in drawing and sculpture were the culmination of Gallery 400's commission of the artist initiated in 2004. A catalog documenting the project and with an essay by exhibition organizer Lorelei Stewart will be published in Summer 2006.

Edgar Arceneaux has shown his drawings, sculptures, installations and films in solo exhibitions at The Kitchen, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Kunstwerke, Berlin; UCLA Hammer Museum; the Studio Museum, New York; and Montgomery Gallery, Pomona College, among others. His work has been included in group exhibitions at Astrup Fearnley Museum of Art, Oslo; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; Witte de With Museum, Rotterdam; Kunsthalle Basel; Bronx Museum, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Arceneaux was recently the subject of an Artforum feature by Jeffrey Kastner (Feb. 06) and featured in Afterall 10 in essays by Charles Gaines and Catrin Lorch. Arceneaux's books Lost Library and 107 th Street, Watts were published in 2003 by Kunstverein Ulm, Germany and Revolver, Frankfurt, respectively. Arceneaux lives and works in Los Angeles and is represented by Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects; Adamski Gallery for Contemporary Art, Aachen and Galerie Kamm, Berlin.

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Edgar Arceneaux's The Alchemy of Comedy...Stupid was generously supported by a 2005 Joyce Award from the The Joyce Foundation. The Joyce Awards are presented annually to honor Midwest mainstream cultural organizations that commission works by artists of color in each of four genres: visual art, dance, music and theater.

The forthcoming catalog is generously supported by Sara Szold. Special thanks to David Alan Grier and Cheryl Lynn Bruce for their talented contributions. The video was produced by Merc Arceneaux. Artist Ron Clark was its director of photography. The exhibition was additionally made possible by the Pasadena Arts and Culture Commission and the City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs Division; Artpace San Antonio; a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency; and the College of Architecture and the Arts, University of Illinois at Chicago. The Daryl Gerber Stokols and Jeff Stokols Fund provides general support to Gallery 400 programs.