“Rex Morris, also known as FCKNRX, is an abstract contemporary tattoo artist whose work embraces the dark edges of the fringed underground. Through a progressive and poignant destruction of the tokenized tattoo industry, Rex is creating a visual language that resonates with those who do not find themselves represented through mainstream tattoo aesthetics, philosophies or archetypes.
FCKNRX tattoos are meant to endow body-ownership and control in a world where we often have none. Like a controlled burn in the depths of a far reaching forest, this artwork compassionately destroys to make way for new.”
ARTIST STATEMENT
My work in all media is an exploration of memory.
The memory we carry with us, the memory we impart on our environment.
I try to let my obsession be a conduit through which things pass, repeating and overlaying and feeding back until reference material becomes a new language. I typically work with a limited palette of black and earth tones to focus on structure and texture.
In tattoo, I make large compositions that are both sympathetic to and confrontational with the body’s surface. Referencing imagery of sedimentary geology and large-scale extraction infrastructure, i hope to dilate scale and time to position The Body as a vessel, a landscape, an organism, and an era. Every version of itself that isn’t subject to colonial violence. These works are all improvised, often done “freemachine” (no stencil or drawing beforehand) in collaboration with the wearer.
My sound sculptures use motors, belts, chain, and similar mechanisms to achieve a droning, repetitious sound. I fabricate them to reflect an imaginary utility, often obfuscating the direct source of the audio. The futile, encumbering feeling of living life in the post-post-post-industrial age is something I hope to capture in machines made to do nothing but emit a racket.