Recent Artist Statement/ Draft of Art Proposal

Artist Bio:

Marval A Rex is a self-proclaimed mutant, artist and Jedi apprentice to the Master we call Life. Although he primarily identifies as a ceramicist, Marval is open to any and all mediums in expressing his indomitable spirit. His most recent artistic forays include video art and the photographic memoir of his gender adventure. For the sanctity of his mental and emotional health, Marval lives Life as Art, where every moment is full of intentional wonder and hidden masterpiece. Alongside his surrender to his inner muse (boy is she sassy), Marval holds a deep sense of spirituality, moving beyond any existential angst to find magic in all things. His daily meditative practice includes throwing a hexagram for the I Ching or Book of Changes, consulting astrological transits, and imbibing the wisdom of Gene Keys and Human Design. 

Testo Yoni: 

Semiopolotical Codes for Male and Female

My current body of work involves genitalia and the “codes” prescribed to such organs over time. Utilizing ceramic sculpture and digital glitchart in the form of installation, I expose a collective understanding of genitalia as it existed in times long past, and in the postmodern present: what I like to call the technopornographic era. 

The ceramic sculptures are handmade fertility vessels (raw clay) that take the form of reimagined genitalia— that of the intersex and/or transgender body. Their lusciousness is open and vulnerable, they exist in utter fragility. 

  The glitchart prints, a new form of digital art, depict internet-based pornographic scenes that have been analyzed, obscured and destroyed through the heavy editing process characteristic of glitchart. Their electronic aesthetic are purposeful and speak to the overwhelming and highly digitized desires of the modern day. They exist in an untouchable and thus impenetrable realm, fading in and out between the crackling of hi-tech equipment.     

By melding two seemingly separate bodies of work into the same space, I force the viewer to consider the emotional and conceptual qualities associated with genitalia as they appear ancient and sacred ( in the ceramic vessels) and as they occur through the technopornographic lens (as the glitchart prints). What is our relationship to our genitalia today? Do we honor them or simply use and consume them? Do we presence the seat of our desires as ancient civilizations once did? Do sexual desires—and thus our genitalia—exist now somehow beyond the physical…in a realm of electronic binary code? 

Perhaps a question for the future: how will technology further change the biology of humanity? 

Pan and Hiz Worms, 2016

Pan & Hiz Worms

I find myself a most vicious pan

After the god

And because it is

Forced upon me

The pretending of a man

I jauntily accept and even

Cherish the pretending

Because it feels

maybe,

close, slight

To recognition.

But I also

Work it out of my body

Like a worm

Because I know it’s not good for the health:

To be a man.

And yet I keep on pan

Pandering

de-worming

Pretending

Right on cue

Clockwork pomme

The finest refined actor,

Like many of us:

For all our lives.

But!

the deworming

Leaves a residue

A scent

My history is stained

With olfactory factories

Chugging out the truth

While the birds die.

And the gods to which i

Pander to

Know

That I ruse

I pretend

I hide some details

Here and there

And they peek out

Of my work pants

And plaid red shirt.

While I lay

very flat

Against the crotch of

my stiff cotton trousers.

I

Pan

Pandering

Pretending to be a man.

A Man.

ANIMA REX, my foundation.

ANIMA REX

My underdeveloped Feminine

There’s the sea

Calm,

She smokes a cigarette alone on a pier

White cropped hair carried in the wind,

Solemn and mysterious,

Curved and sexy.

I see her,

Behind a glass case.

and I, on el otro lado,

I critique her with the janitorial squad.

I listen, I know,

I talk, I don’t listen.

I agree and look out at the sea,

And she Is cradled in my wind

And I am regaining my consciousness

Or my awareness

Sometime. as

Salt on my tongue.

Phoenix Tears

“I think the world now is begging us to let the breaking happen. Within. To mirror and heal the breaking happening all around, without. We are being asked to break. Break Up. Break down. Break out. Shatter. Bleed. You’re on the right track now. The right track to break into radical loving like a thief hungry for soul, ready to serve sweet, dark humanity and the earth’s tangled questions that insist we return her urgent call to let our hearts break into compassionate action.”

                                    TRANSFORMATION 2016  

Neuw Moon, Old Poetry of What Trust Is.... Circa 2009

Right Now, 1:12 pm on a Friday in October of 2009

Right now I am lost in her irises.

They are easy pools of contemplation

That I slip into with a zealousness

of the greatest intensity, but one

pock-marked by my many years of

walking wounded.

In fractions of seconds of minutes

of hours of days of years I’ll

see tribulations.

But I think I’ll always come back to her irises.

And rest.

Drink from the endless gourds of life kept grounded by

her mind.

And she thinks she’s gone,

but she’s not. She’s right

here,

and I am in her irises.  

                    

POETRY CORNERED, 2016

Processing Aloneness and the Pain of Others,

Which is My Pain Too And I

Am Blessed Enough to Taste It,

Bitter and Sweet, Like Rich Hot Cocoa

And Burnt Roof of Mouth;

La Dulce Culpa.

Or

W.A.L.S.T.I.B

By Marval A Rex

There is only so much you can do.

There is this breath.

There is this moment.

We as this species are built to believe we know.

Right now we think we know.

Anything.

Everything.

Somethings.

I sit here, embroiled in my own emotional wave.

Also attune to the other that is myself.

And I think I know.

The truest wisdom I’ve heard so far

(and I just cleaned out my waxy ears literally, so my hearing is more clear)

Is that you can’t truly know anything.

The trick, the dance:

It’s about having boundaries when you feel that there are

No boundaries between

anything and anyone

And the terror of that truism

Keeps us all thinking that

We know.

I’ve seen two people become one

I’ve witnessed swaths of people act and breathe as one

I’ve felt this species as one.

And yet our mind runs us around the track and shen-pas and

Shit storms all over

the unification parade

The consolidated dance

The everything messiness

That our brain even prescribes it

As mess

When it is our brain that is run amok.

And I know that all the hateful, distrustful, saddened words

Of everyone everywhere,

All the people who distrust you

Distrust themselves

Don’t have their brain in order.  

And let all the genius truths of their body be distorted

By the mind and let

the  brain build

A castle of defenses and supposed truths

And blame the other

And feel resentment

Out of their own sense of

Internal chaos

Further muddied by the shit slinging mind out-of-bounds

The mind is not inherently evil

Nothing is

Nothing is inherently anything

Our minds have created evil 

As a response to information from our bodies.

Our minds give words and the words

Hold weight

And sometimes these words

can weigh us down.

Sometimes we chain ourselves to words

Words chain themselves to us, clandestinely

When we think we have freed  our self.

When we think we have it right

We crucify ourselves with the smugness reserved

Only for the Mind.

Amazing

it’s amazing!

Awe-some,

To evoke Awe.

The complexity is the majesty

Of kinesiology.

The kinesiology of God,

Our truly weighted word for

Sheer luminescent brilliance,

As prescribed by the Christians. 

Felt by all,

Even when in deep deep denial

For darkness darkens your mind

And crumples the body

But the awesome-ness exists on

In your fecundity

Brighter than ever

Waiting

For your mind to grow weak

While the body grows even weaker.

It waits

Licking itself to a shimmering bold hue

until you break

And then grants you release

As some form of death.

Sometimes our bodies follow along with this death

And we mourn for the change

We don’t understand.

I’ve seen some darkness.

I’ve gone down into places,

Which allows for my beacon

My lighthouse ringing near and far

To expose more of my shadow.

They’re handsome, devilish

Toothy and well dressed

Ivory skin and like every gaunt

And banal vampire of every romance novel ever

But actually a phantom

Who craves music first

Blood second

Love third.

What do you see?

Its an amorphous movement

But can become anything,

Your shadow.

It will tell you things

You need to know

What do you see?

<>

In reparations for my

Allegiance

my bleak shadowness gifts me:

My light grows bright.

For I’ve embraced darkness

known darkness

Felt darkness and

Succumbed to the black

Of my night, your night

And the world’s night.

I’ve turned every sound off

And violently torn my eyes

Apart in the deep silence

Of inverted mass.

I have been gifted with the darkness

The drowning loudness of death

And in its shamanimity

That has groped me tenderly

I have been given

The eyes of others.

To see their pain

Their worlds

Their hurts

Their discrepancies

Their dislocated tendencies

Their flashing pasts

Their tone all the way down to the

bloodlines

And my broken inner child

Climbing the mountain of its new

Bodice, no dislocations there

Asks and call for one slice of

Weighty words:

“I don’t understand,

But I want to. I want to try to

Understand you”

If I look to understand you

I come to see more of myself,

Us broken angels, some

Of us don’t want to understand ourselves

Out of our broken bottomness

Out of the shards

We refuse because

they sting on the reuptake

And even then

Even momentarily fused to

Another’s brokenness

A reflection of my own stained brittleness

I am still grasped by the beauty

Broken or whole

Because it is all mine

All of it is in me

And I am in all

Basic basic basic

It’s been said before

The mind comes in and judges and analyzes and takes all apart

But it doesn’t make it any less true

And logic loses here

So I don’t spend time focusing on the A or B or C

I focus on my love

My listening

And my surrendering

To my moment

Your moment

And the broken to whole

And the just plain broken

And the plain glorious whole of

All of it

With holiness in sight,

Or not.

Because it is wholly holy no matter what

You think.

Caving in,

I will offer you a hand

I will listen

And try to understand.

I will try I will try.

Even when I can barely handle my own depth

Of the summit of my sadness

And the whispers of my psyche take over me

And consume and frighten me into

A shivering child whose

Fear is of its own

Wrongdoing.

Marval,

You did nothing wrong.

The wrongness is a judgement

Based on an illusion

Created by a mechanism

Infiltrated with fear

And

Misunderstanding.

How do I release the Movie?

Focus on the beauty.

Focus on the Love.

Focus on the Art and the Truth

And the soft purr of cat cheek on my arm

And the softness available

In every touch.

And the connecting and blurring with others.

Focus on self gratitude and self care.

And creative loving, living.

Don’t act out of mental fear,

Sit and wait and

wait to respond

And fall in

Love 

With your generator,

Your holy turbine of trumpeting

Heralds.

Fall in love with your vessel

And the mind will quiet and

Serve a dull texture

And lose its weighty words

And beg you to come back

Even if it's a back to come with a

Body full and present

And as the center console of your

Doing.

My design is to empower and

Provide support

When it is your design and when it is your aura

Others will react as they do

Depending on their stage where they

May or may not dance with their darkness

I have so far to go I feel

But it is exciting

The challenge

And it is rewarding

My heart croons to me.

And one day my hunger will lessen

My thoughts will gain buoyancy

And will fade when need be

And I won’t

Treat anyone

Anyway

Just because my pain is weedling me around it’s little thumb

I will know all my pain,

And be open to knowing its newness

As it rises each morning

For layers grow like skin

And layers scar over for revisitation

The raised resuscitations of whimpering memory

Scars are legacy.

And I am nothing

Nothing and a q/hero:

So I keep on keeping along

Floating down the river

Trying to find the strategy

In a swift paddle move here and there

To graciously kiss the space between

Myself and jagged rock

And love the river

And surrender to the jetting stream

And open myself up

To the deep dull sadness

And explosive almost violent joy

That is caught in every swing

Of river bend and

Paddle sweep.

I am River

I am Bird

I am Marval,

Marvel of neux-ness

Of spiralling presence that

Announces full and bright

“I am Now”

I am Now

I am here Now

I am here Now Doing

I am Myself here Now Doing

I am Myself here Now Doing and I’m Busy

Busy empowering and supporting

Myself and others

And surrendering

To this wild wild ride.

What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been.