Primary Projects Presents Asif’s Guns, A Pop-Up Installation By Asif Farooq
Artist Reception: Saturday, December 8, 7 – 10 p.m.
Store Hours: December 6 – 9, 10 a.m. – 10 p.m.
Primary Projects Pop-Up Space
167 NW 25th Street
Wynwood Arts District, FL 33127
www.primaryflight.com
www.primaryprojectspace.com .
Asif’s Guns is a pop-up installation, showcasing more than 300 firearms handcrafted from cardboard by Asif Farooq. Curated to simulate an authentic gun store at a 400-square-foot retail space in the heart of Wynwood Arts District, Asif’s Guns will be loaded with replicas that range from a traditional snub-nosed revolver to an M16 assault rifle.
This installation will serve as a sweeping survey of contemporary weapons by the Miami-born artist, who is meticulously faithful to reproducing the size, shape and individual components of each gun model, using found cardboard boxes, an x-acto knife and glue. Asif’s Guns is a romantic testament envisioned through the eyes of an artist raised in a gun-friendly environment, and delivered to the senses of a gun-obsessed America. Farooq challenges viewers to become aware of their instinctive reactions and principles as it relates to gun culture and the place of art, toys and iconography in probing controversial questions about communal and personal values.
Farooq’s own response, "My guns are a confessional: if a gift doesn’t hurt to give, then it isn’t much of a gift at all," references how these objects of destruction are fashioned as private portraits of the artist’s fallen brother. Books IIII Bischof, founder and curator of Primary Projects, explains, "Asif Farooq exceeds the standard definition of artist. With or without the viewer, with or without the gallery, he will always make guns and he will always absorb everything pertaining to projectile weaponry. I have learned that for Farooq, it all breaks down to the two simple concepts of love and respect – something that a mass majority of gun-toting society will never be able to ascertain as a unified concept.â€
