Marvin Touré
{Fig. 27} The {X} Mutation

{Fig. 27} The {X} Mutation is the first solo exhibition by artist Marvin Touré. He presents a body of work that emerges from one question; what if our emotions manifested as physical mutations?

This show explores Touré’s body of work that sits at the intersection of BLK and human emotion. As the spiritual core of this work, Touré defines BLK as the quiet reflective space for truth to exist. BLK as love, BLK as loss, BLK as paranoia, BLK as regret, and among other things, BLK as joy. Racial identity affects the materiality of emotion. Touré’s creatures produce exoskeletons of BLK crystal and BLK sand. As they continue to mutate, the line between limbs and landscape blur exposing their inextricable connection to their surroundings.

Marvin Touré’s practice combines both the American superhero and Ivorian Cultural narratives in order to build a composite reality reflecting his first generation identity. In the western consciousness, the Black body has been the subject of intense fascination and fear. His work probes this fetishistic gaze through the lens of his life and examines how continuously oscillating between a perceived super and quasi-human state can affect self-identity.

Biography

Marvin Touré is an Ivorian-American artist who engages with his heritage and urban southern upbringing through his deeply autobiographical practice. Touré’s work has been included in exhibitions at The Hole (2016) in New York City, the PRIZM art fair (2016) in Miami, Florida, Project for Empty Space at Gateway Project Spaces in Newark, New Jersey (2016), the SVA Chelsea Gallery (2016-2017) in New York City, the Pfizer Building (2017) in Brooklyn, New York, Smack Mellon (2017-2018) in Brooklyn, New York, and the University of Connecticut-Stamford (2018) in Stamford, Connecticut. In 2014 Marvin received a B.A. in New Media Arts with a minor in Architecture from Southern Polytechnic State University in Marietta, Georgia. In 2016 he received an M.F.A. in Fine Arts from The School of Visual Arts and soon after attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture residency (2016).