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The subject of the documentary entitled Unspeakable and called by art critic Carlo McCormick, the father of “Sexpressionism,” the Reverend Steven Johnson Leyba lives and works in Albuquerque, NM. His work will be on view in Alchemical Transsexual inspired by Genesis P-Orridge’s Pandrogyne in Chicago at 2nd 4lr Gallery, June 13—July 13 (opening Friday, June 13 6 PM-midnight.)
Steven Johnson Leyba, Penelope #9 (from PENTAGON; Sexual Deification & Spiritual Defiance). Courtesy of the Artist.I see my mixed media sexual paintings as political reclamations. The sexual image is used to sell everything from cars to toothpaste, as if our bodies have become products we no longer own. I paint oil over acrylic over collage. I embellish the paintings with glass beads and blood. They are very sexually graphic, sculptural, human, and quite original. I use the blood to flatten the photographic quality. I then paint back the detail that I feel is important. Blood and sex are part of being human and being alive. We are so used to having our culture define how we perceive ourselves, our bodies, our sexuality, and who we are, that when someone has a different point of view of the sexual image and makes the commitment to put it on canvas, it can be frightening and challenging. As a Native American, the blood has a ritual aspect, and it is a way to put myself—my DNA—literally into the painting. My paintings are ritual objects and they are sexual artifacts.
I work primarily in hand made books. My ninth hand painted book PENTAGON; Sexual Deification & Spiritual Defiance was finished late 2006 and has been exhibited extensively in the United States and Europe. Currently I am working on my tenth book Alchemical Transsexual. I am also painting large canvases in the New Mexico desert, where I now live, that depict variations on images from the book. With each book I do, I need a drastic change in my life. With the new book I needed to leave San Francisco to live on a reservation, away from the city, without the things we take for granted like running water or electricity. It is quite a challenge to paint in the dirt, fighting the elements of nature, but that was always the challenge the alchemists had to endure.
I have been a controversial artist for almost two decades. I am an artist that holds a mirror up to society to show its cracks. While most American artists strive for “rock star” status and easy money, I embrace the warrior philosophy of my Apache ancestors, one that focuses instead on world politics, controversy, radical sexuality, unconventional religion, revenge, the reclaiming of controversial symbols, the use of sex acts and blood rituals, and painting with my own bodily fluids. I see the unique position American artists have in influencing the world. I do not choose to be an entertainer, but rather an enlightener and instigator. I am an aesthetic war starter in the Native American tradition of “Coyote the Trickster.” Coyote never chooses camp or kitsch above content and truth.
I am a complicated sell in a sugarcoated, dumbed-down global art market. Contemporary world culture puts marketability over substance, corporate rights over individual rights, one type of beauty over all others, stupidity over content and common sense. In the age of mediocre global mass culture anything smart and good is bad and may be a threat to our consumer culture, the economy, or even international security. I am a Prometheus in a Mickey Mouse world who chooses to look past the bread and circus of our cultural traps to embrace the full human experience.
