The Lethal Beauty of Violence

Can the words, “Beauty” and “Violence” work together? 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.