Playing With Guns – Rylan Broadbent
It’s a subject that raises eyebrows the moment it’s broached – Guns. A highly divisive symbol, a gun is a nudge towards fear, a barrier to intrusion or a means to a meal. Rylan Broadbent has taken ‘the gun’ on and in Playing With Guns presents new layers of significance and even though he has peeled the onion with eyes wide open, his vision has not been blurred by tears. But he has left his fingerprints. By re-evaluating the form – passing it through the filter of art – the function all but disappears and from this loaded barrel comes another message. It is not, however, a soft challenge like a cartoon POP from a toy gun; resilience shoots from the hard core of a determined aesthetic. Broadbent has fashioned mandalas from guns. These pieces, beautifully constructed, read first as delicate, lovely, embodying notions of peace and harmony, balance and equilibrium, meditation and focus – passive messages. The mind sees not the individual symbol but an entirety made up of design components that work communally to create a whole. As recognition sets in, the hard metal, abrupt edges, steely tones and immutable firmness of a physical gun, which Broadbent has convinced us as existing solely as a means to unity, registers. Using children’s wax crayons as material and bullet casings as molds, he has cast hundreds of beautiful bullets that could also be used as crayons again. This is what transpires when an artist plays with guns. There is nothing ‘bad boy’ about these works. Broadbent has been smart; he has left the safety on.
Rylan Broadbent is an MFA Visual Arts alumni of UBCO.
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