ALLEGORY: STREET CORNER (2000) is the visual centerpiece of a series of related installations, performances, and images collectively known as brothers brown and small. In Allegory: Street Corner, silhouette wall paintings of my older brother and his friends tower over the viewer. Designed to suggest the silhouettes used for target practice, these forms are spot lit with amber lights by which shadows of water pistols, miniature cars, and classic G.I. Joe army men are cast. These signifiers of adulthood (and violence) distilled into youthful play become suspended shrapnel before each figure.
REVISING CAIN AND ABEL (2000) occurred at a shooting range where my brother taught me how to load and shoot a gun. The performance piece consisted of my brother and I shooting at representations of each other in the form of silhouette targets based on old photographs of us as younger boys in gang-like poses. We then switched targets and shot at representations of ourselves.
Conceived as the conceptual foundation for brothers brown and small, this violent, yet sincere and tender gesture, was an attempt to invest new life into a delicate and highly romanticized relationship between brothers.
Two caliber firearms were used: a Smith & Wesson 9mm which resulted in star-like patterned bullet holes, and a Springfield .45 Automatic Colt Pistol (ACP) which produced larger, circular holes in the target.