John Barnes
Marigny Warning
2014

Name: Marigny Warning
Brand: John Barnes
Price: 13000 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

medium: decommissioned shotgun barrels and mixed wood John Barnes Jr. made his entrance into this world on a sunny day around lunchtime in the quaint community of Bogalusa, LA. John is the youngest of two siblings. When Barnes’ family moved to Baton Rouge, LA, the public school system provided him with his earliest interactions with art making. “I basically discovered that when you get bored there are great drawing spaces in the margins of lined pages, I could fully invest all of my imagination into those margins, hours, and whole days would pass before I’d reconnect with the people in my surroundings.” quotes Barnes. All throughout Barnes’ education as a youth he was drawing, he didn’t really imagine himself as an artist until he attended Southern A&M University as an Art major, where he worked closely and sought additional mentorship from the incredible faculty. Barnes attended Memphis College of Art for graduate study where he was awarded a Master’s of Fine Art degree in Sculpture in 1999. From there Barnes began his Academic career in New Orleans at Dillard University where he is currently Program Coordinator of the Visual Arts program. Barnes’ work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions throughout the region, nation, and also in juried international exhibitions. To this day, Barnes credits his artistic success in large part due to the dedication, and depth of expertise of the faculty during the time that he was a student at Southern University. statement "Marigny Warning is an artistic response to a tragic shooting that happened in the Marigny, which is a gentrified or gentrifying historic neighborhood in New Orleans, it is a gradually changing area with charming creole cottages and shotgun houses. It is also experiencing some of the challenges that the rest of the nation are experiencing such as racial profiling, vigilantism, fear, distrust, and in some instances conflict. Marigny Warning was developed in June after the Louisiana Supreme Court exonerated a white male property owner who shot an unarmed black male teen who jumped his fence. The teen also lives in that neighborhood, as a renter. The sculpture references Louisiana's version of the controversial Stand Your Ground law, which is referred to as the Castle Doctrine. The property owner shot the teenager in the head while standing OUTSIDE of his home, which violates my understanding of the Castle Doctrine. Those events served as a catalyst for my creative response. Once I committed myself to working with these shotguns, the vision of this shotgun house hybrid immediately surfaced in my mind and as did the text. I trusted in that vision. Throughout the form there are messages that are amalgamated into the layers of wood, which reference my perceptions about the shooting. The shotguns are aimed in both directions out at the world. Phrases such as "TURN DOWN YOUR MUSIC" represents a direct warning from within the house when juxtaposed around the shotgun. The word CASTLE appears prominently on the roof of the structure. I used toy blocks to spell out the warnings, they add a playful yet disarming look to the harshness of the words. I also link that shooting and the apparent bending of the rules in its aftermath to current national events that involve unarmed black male teens being shot by armed white men."

Creator:

John Barnes (1971, American)

Creation Year:

2014

Dimensions:

Height: 22.5 in (57.15 cm)Width: 62 in (157.48 cm)Depth: 5 in (12.7 cm)

Movement & Style:

Contemporary

Period:

2010-

Condition:

Gallery Location: