X______ E_____ C_____
AKA MX. SANDWICH AKA B____L_T____ AKA JOHNNY PALETA
ARTIST, POET, ARCHIVIST
"I STRIVE TO BE HUMBLE, LEST I STUMBLE."
BIOGRAPHY
Xxavier Edward Carter (b.1986 Dallas, Texas) is a Transdisciplinary Artist of Black and Native American descent. The eldest child of professional athlete (Russell Carter) and saleswoman (Melody Missick), embodiment and communication were foundational to his upbringing as well as flexibility in new environments. Xxavier attended Stanford University on a football scholarship, receiving a BFA in Studio Art after studying Political Science and English. After 7 years of art world immersion Xxavier returned to Dallas to receive his MFA from Southern Methodist University, the alma mater of his father.
Through a commitment to the concepts of returns, community, ecology, humanity, abstraction, and poetry, Xxavier has established his career through the intimate connections made sharing his work and the philosophy that has molded his practice. He is currently the Head Artist and Engineer of Goldfish Dreams, an artistic publication and production house based in Dallas, Texas.
Through a commitment to the concepts of returns, community, ecology, humanity, abstraction, and poetry, Xxavier has established his career through the intimate connections made sharing his work and the philosophy that has molded his practice. He is currently the Head Artist and Engineer of Goldfish Dreams, an artistic publication and production house based in Dallas, Texas.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I am a transdisciplinary artist, meaning that my artwork is first and foremost research based and from that research the disciplines utilized filter across a number of different production methods to create the objects of my practice. I describe my work as multisensorial, layered, and meditative. The focal points of my research are ecologies, masculinity, communal practices, race, kinship, material histories, currency, and socio economic/socio political boundaries. My heritage of being Black and Muscogee is reflected through my research and is a point of departure for what I call the revolutionary promise embedded in my work. This promise is an assessment of how we consider history and an action towards possible futures in a more equitable world. My preferred methods of production end in works on paper, print material, internet based archives, multimedia and sculptural installations, and performances rendered through abstraction, narrative, poetry and embodied activities that often have a historical, social, spiritual, and/or ritual component.
Recently I have been doing an intensive investigation of sexuality, grief, narrative structures, historical and personal lineages, immigration, contemporary visual cultures, preservative architectures, and ecological conservancy. For me this is rooted in the development of the site of my great-grandmother’s home as a studio and art center. I describe my works as being driven by the systems which we are embedded in as individuals. My work often deals with violent and oppressive superstructures and as a ground to be broken for our collective growth. The most compelling artwork for me are things that have analogies across cultures such as stories of origins, superhumanity, afterlives, and love stories. Inside of these contexts there are points of consideration that link the individuals interacting with objects to an often esoteric world of lived experiences made tangible through our reasoning of the world. In the context of material waste, media bombardment, state intervention, and religiosity, I find joy and provocative thought in tending to the soil where my efforts hope to sprout for those I may never know.
Ultimately my work is an archive of research compressed through forms in conversation and commentary with the material as culture revealing itself in fragments, the output is always done in the service of poetry as an inventory of the stories of the world.
Recently I have been doing an intensive investigation of sexuality, grief, narrative structures, historical and personal lineages, immigration, contemporary visual cultures, preservative architectures, and ecological conservancy. For me this is rooted in the development of the site of my great-grandmother’s home as a studio and art center. I describe my works as being driven by the systems which we are embedded in as individuals. My work often deals with violent and oppressive superstructures and as a ground to be broken for our collective growth. The most compelling artwork for me are things that have analogies across cultures such as stories of origins, superhumanity, afterlives, and love stories. Inside of these contexts there are points of consideration that link the individuals interacting with objects to an often esoteric world of lived experiences made tangible through our reasoning of the world. In the context of material waste, media bombardment, state intervention, and religiosity, I find joy and provocative thought in tending to the soil where my efforts hope to sprout for those I may never know.
Ultimately my work is an archive of research compressed through forms in conversation and commentary with the material as culture revealing itself in fragments, the output is always done in the service of poetry as an inventory of the stories of the world.