Exhibition Review: Guns in America
© Jeff Corwin_Guns in America
Written by Amanda Karmolinski
Copy Edited by Erin Pedigo
Photo Edited by Yanting Chen
Artist Jeff Corwin’s newest traveling exhibition, Guns in America, is more relevant today than ever. His untitled pieces are created to bring awareness to the lack of guidance surrounding guns in America today. Corwin has created eighteen visually arresting artistic photographs, filled with firearms, alongside Americana, toys and other symbols of innocence.
His images in Guns in America speak to the truth of the matter of gun policy. He uses lighting as his main component—the photographs’ hyper-satured colors impact the eye; the representations of violence and trauma bathed in those colors are also jarring. Corwin said in an artist’s statement that he was left with three handguns following his father’s passing; unable to decide what to do with them, he left them in a lockbox.
Corwin was first prompted to create messaging through art with his late father’s guns in late 2012, following the 2011 Sandy Hook school shooting. In 2013 Corwin revisited his father’s handguns and began gathering antiques and props to build mini sets to stage his photographs, according to a gallery press release.
© Jeff Corwin_Guns in America
© Jeff Corwin_Guns in America
One of the exhibition’s pieces speaks to the Sandy Hook tragedy: In the darkened corner of a classroom, an American flag leans alongside a window, with a single desk in the frame. On the desk is an open book; maybe a child once sat there. On the seat lays a handgun. Blood is spattered on the wall. Even without people in the frame, viewers immediately conjure the trauma of Sandy Hook and other school shootings. Corwin states his intention of not arguing against the Second Amendment—his intention, arguably, is to get people to feel. In his statement Corwin calls his images—and “the subject matter and the violence we face every single day”—unsubtle.
The colors in every image are nearly fluorescent. Your attention is not drawn directly to the gun in any of the pieces, but rather to the scene around it. Another image is of a baby doll seated on green grass against a white picket fence. It’s the American dream. It would be, if the baby doll wasn’t missing the top half of her head, which is stuffed with a handgun. A miniature American flag is tucked in the crook of her tiny arm. This speaks to the broken American dream. Shaken, you want to see an image of innocent children’s play, but you cannot ignore the handgun. It shows that danger and violence are possible even in the safest, purest places.
© Jeff Corwin_Guns in America
The collection’s first image is one of the most evocative, and may be the most representative, of Corwin’s entire message. It is a collage-type American flag, with images of people, families, where white stars should be. The stripes are interrupted with a hand aiming a gun directly at the people. The American flag suddenly doesn’t seem the strong and proud emblem. Guns in America will be on view June 24-September 11 at the Holter Museum of Art, 12 E. Lawrence St., Helena, Montana, 59601.
© Jeff Corwin_Guns in America
