Working in many types of media, including installation, drawing, painting and printmaking, Arseneau appropriates images and fragments of images from a range of sources, though the internet provides him with the majority his raw materials. The images he chooses to work with are most often related to tragedy: plane crashes, car crashes, catastrophic acts of nature. Arseneau takes these manifestations of death, futility and helplessness and constructs a hyperreality where danger is intensified and emotional states multiply exponentially. In this amplified world of collisions, shot through with fear and adrenalin Arseneau fabricates a space for a kind of Zizekian processing of the traumas in life. By manifesting deep seated, universal anxieties, by bring them out of the self and into existence the specter is realized and its nature can be examined.
Josh Arseneau lives and works in Portland, OR.