In Conversation With Nexus-6: Pushing Boundaries
I had the pleasure of sitting down with a local, and somewhat boundary-pushing artist, Nexus-6. Although he may disagree about his art pushing boundaries, I think the consensus between our conversation was that it is pushing boundaries for our rich Mormon community here in Utah. If you haven’t had the chance to check out Nexus-6’s artwork, head over to your Instagram and check out his complex collages. There is an unmistakably complex relationship between religion and nudity within his artwork, and as I sat down with Nexus-6, he tells me about where that comes from
Q:How long have you been doing art?
A:My whole life. I started drawing as a kid, I started drawing cartoons, comics, and things. That’s what I wanted to do all through high school, I wanted to draw comic books. I went to tons of figure arts classes, but then I kind of stopped for a like several, several years. I became a creative writer and I did that and marketing, but just like in the last couple of years I kind of rediscovered visual art again.
What made you make the switch from being a creative writer to becoming a collage artist?
Well, when you go to work and you write all day, that’s the last thing you want to do when you get home, but I still needed a creative outlet. Writing just seemed so awful when I had been writing all day, I needed to switch, I needed to do something else for creative output and so I just started making other things. Just doing visual art instead.
Did you jump straight into collage or did you do something in-between creative writing and collage art?
This is going to sound funny, but I’m kind of a sci-fi nerd and stuff, and I really like Doctor Who. I just had this idea of taking Doctor Who episodes and turning them into a sixty’s movie poster. I just had this idea, but I didn’t know how to execute it, so I started watching tutorials and stuff on YouTube and through my work, I had a photoshop and so I just started putting these things together. So that’s how I started actually. I was just making this Doctor Who fan art.
Where do you get your content from?
There’s a site called Unsplash, it has tons and tons of high-quality images, so if I need something specific, I can go there and look for them.
I noticed in your artwork there is a lot of religious influence, and so I wondered what your religious background was?
Yeah, I grew up Mormon, but I didn’t grow up in Utah. I grew up outside of Utah, which is different because growing up outside of Utah and being Mormon was a bigger part of my identity. Here it isn’t a big deal because half the population is Mormon, so growing up outside of Utah I was like the only kid besides my sisters and one other kid from my high school. It was just a real part of my identity. Then, when I came here to Utah that all changed because it could longer be something I could cling onto as a part of my identity. I was in my late twenties when I came to Utah. I went to BYU and I went for writing and got my degrees in English.
Do you think your transition from being Mormon to becoming an ex-Mormon has influenced your artwork right now?
People ask me about the influence of my art, especially about the nude imagery with the religious stuff, and I always make a joke that I obviously have some like deep-seeded sexual frustration or like psychosexual, religious issues. I guess I don’t really know, when I started doing the Doctor Who stuff I just thought, let me just experiment with collage and things. When I started messing around with it, it’s just what came out. Mormonism itself doesn’t have a visual language, and in fact, sometimes they kind of reject that kind of stuff. Like, in Catholicism there are certain tropes/images that show up over and over again in lots of different pieces of art. Halos, crosses, martyrs, candles, these kinds of things. Mormonism doesn’t have that language.
Do you think it’s because it’s a younger religion?
Partly, but I think also just Mormon religious just kind of rejects a lot of those symbols. That is part of its theology.
I needed some kind of religious language to use, but Mormonism didn’t offer it, so I had to get inspired by Catholicism. To me it just kind of represented all religion and I’m just kind of using that as my religion language.
I had a question about the pixelization because we talked about the crosses, but the pixelization is that just for Instagram?
Yeah, if you got to my website actually, it’s all uncensored.
I did think that the pixelization was pretty cool though. Almost like a layer on top of a layer, like collage art just kind of is.
Interesting, you know when I first started doing the nudity, I was very afraid to show like nipples and things and so I would just strategically cover everything, and it was more like implied nudity…but the more I did it, just the more comfortable I got with the nudity itself.
I just wanted to touch on the sexual pleasuring portrayed in your artwork. Was there a specific reason for wanting to portray that in your art pieces?
Not specifically, but at the same time, there’s still like this inner play between religion and like pornography. In a lot of ways to me, the way that they clash in my mind or how they overlap in my mind is that they are very similar. You have people who are like saints and things, right? Then you go adore them as like objects, like the Virgin Mary isn’t a person to someone Catholic, right? The Virgin Mary is a symbol it’s a thing that is put on a pedestal. They still get a sense of self-satisfaction; you could almost say like self-stimulating, in an adoring that type of art in religious worship. You could say the same thing about pornography. The women in these aren’t people, right? They’re symbols, they’re objects to be adorned. People get the same self-satisfaction.
Do you think in your art you’re trying to expose that about religion and pornography?
Yeah, I want to show the similarities and also kind of debunk them at the same time? Pulling the religious stuff down but elevating the women at the same time.
May I ask what your religious viewpoint is now?
Oh, I’m pretty much atheist. Haha
I was going to ask about the Anthony Bourdain art piece on your Instagram. Was it a tribute? What inspired you to do it?
Oh yeah, it was a tribute. He’s just one of my heroes. I just love the way he sees the world and the way he shares the world with other people. I particularly like his writing style. I’ve read a couple of his books and they’re just amazing and fun to read. Just his voice is fun. He travels around the world and he talks to all these people, but he never goes into these places and these countries, and acts like their foreign or alien. Everything is done on the terms of the people from that country, and he’s trying to look at that country and culture on its own terms. I think a lot of Americans can learn from.
What are your future plans for being an artist?
I’d love to travel and do like shows and festivals. I don’t know how interested I am in getting my art into galleries. I don’t feel like my art is gallery appropriate. I don’t feel like it’s fine art. Even here in Salt Lake City, you look at the Utah Arts Festival, and I think, ‘man, I would not fit in with these artists.’ The Urban Arts Festival I go to, I’m like, ‘oh, these are my people.’ They’re more underground, they’re scrappier, a little more irreverent. I feel more comfortable in that space.
