Local artist debuts new work at Blake Gallery
Melrose artist Brian K. Johnson is debuting Unregistered Gun at the Blake Gallery in Wakefield.
The image depicts the pistol carried by Squeaky Fromme, the attempted assassin of President Gerald Ford, and is printed using the standard four-color process, which usually requires a very precise alignment of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks.
In this work, however, the color plates are deliberately shifted, creating an uncanny sense of glow and motion—the image is literally and intentionally unregistered. At the corners are printer’s register marks (or crosshairs, depending on interpretation).
While the color plates behave mechanically, the black plate plays a different role. Instead of functioning solely as a source of density, it is composed of tightly set text, drawn from the artist’s experiences with firearms. The language completes the object itself, embedding narrative and memory into the most “authoritative” ink on the page.
“I’ll admit the pun was the first spark for this piece,” Johnson said. “Recent events in Minnesota made the subject feel less conceptual, and I hesitated. In the end I decided it’s better to show the work and let people think about it, rather than to quietly set it aside.”
“Unregistered Gun does not advocate a position on firearms, though the act of displaying it in public touches on both First and Second Amendments,” he said. “Instead, it highlights the tension between authority, regulation, and material reality. Systems designed to impose order—legal, mechanical, or bureaucratic—can fail even when tools, protocols and good intentions are in place.”
The exhibit is on view at the Blake Gallery, tucked inside Wakefield’s Lucius Beebe Memorial Library. Gallery hours are Monday-Thursday 9am-9pm, Friday 9am-6pm, Saturday 9am-5pm, and Sunday 1-5pm. It is quite worthwhile to visit and experience this unique collection, which includes work by 15 other artists besides Johnson, all of whom deserve equal attention, we hasten to add.
