carnival games: after the fall

A fully automatic, automated, pneumatic air gun. The gun is aimed and sighted on lead sheets with a red star screen printed onto the target face. Each target is manually replaced after a full magazine of 20 shots has been fired through it. The images below show the results of 50 full magazines being shot into 50 targets.

This work came out of my questioning of my own love for firearms, the tension I feel with gun culture here in the US, and the problematics of an object that has been built up politically and culturally so as to have almost supernatural powers.

Shooting has always held an alure for me that seems to stem from the ability that it affords me to extend my bodily presence to distances that far exceed what my body can do alone. To do so with precision, repeatability is satisfying, empowering, and thrilling. In the vacuum of a gallery, and with the lens of carnival games, this action becomes aesthetic divorced from news clips, political agendas, and tragedy.