Edgar Arceneaux’s drawings, sculptures and installations use Detroit as a mainstay in the theme and are on display in a new show at Vielmetter Projects in Los Angeles.

The latest series of work builds from conversation between Arceneaux and art historian Julian Myers about the torrid history of committed urban struggle. In this series, Arceneaux continue his exploration by pairing representations of earlier remnants of Western civilizations Arceneaux with the detritus of Detroit’s infamous nightclubs, represented in graphite drawings.

“The Human Sugar Factory” is a series of sugar sculptures that complement the exhibition – boxes, books and other objects dipped in a sugar solution forming the road maps of Detroit.

The show is a continuous investigation from drawings shown in show in 2009 that were described as a “visual and linguistic constellation.” Artist Michael Heizer’s 1971 earthwork “Dragged Mass Displacement” (installed at the Detroit Institute of Art), and the fictional underwater world beneath Lake Michigan taken from Drexciya’s underwater nation of Afronauts served as inspiration.

Arceneaux is also the executive director of Watts House Project, “a collaborative artwork in the shape of a neighborhood redevelopment project.”

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