Can the words, “Beauty” and “Violence” work together? Maybe when we look at a painting, for example, Pablo Picasso’s, Guernica, we can see beauty in Picasso’s depiction of the 1937 bombing of the Basque town of Guernica by German and Italian bombers during the Spanish Civil War. Or maybe there is beauty in a Venus fly-trap plant, designed to kill in a subtle, menacing manner.
PDNB Gallery presents an exhibition of Don Netzer’s photographs depicting sleek, streamlined cartridges, presented as portraits, the artist’s specialty. The magnified images of these projectiles elicit a response of danger and perhaps awe in the design. The cartridge contains the explosive charge and the bullet that, when loaded into a weapon, becomes the lethal component.
But the portrait discloses a note of fact in the text below the subject. The viewer discovers the cartridge is related to a particular mass shooting, i.e., Robb Elementary School, Uvalde Texas, May 24, 2022, .223 inch cartridge, 21 killed.
America is dealing with mass shootings almost on a daily basis. There seems to be no solution to this epidemic. Serious dialogue needs to happen in order to prevent or hopefully cease these grisly attacks. Don Netzer starts the discussion with a single brass case that holds the lethal bullet that ends in death.
LET’S TALK!
Don Netzer: The Lethal Beauty of Violence
June 24 – August 12, 2023
Artist Reception: Saturday, June 24, 2023
Photographs Do Not Bend
150 Manufacturing St., Ste. 203 Dallas, TX 75207
www.pdnbgallery.com
Don Netzer will be present for the reception on Saturday, June 24, 2023, between 5 – 8 PM.
