Having traveled the nation, Al Farrow: Divine Ammunition comes home to San Francisco as Bay Area sculptor Al Farrow (American, b.1943) completes his most recent piece, The White House (2018). The White House, weighing almost a ton, will debut at the exhibition alongside the public premiere of Farrow’s privately commissioned work, Temple Emanuel (2017). Al Farrow: Divine Ammunition casts a striking visual commentary on the contemporary political climate, religion, war, history, culture and faith. Through the display of twenty-four of Farrow’s ornately rendered sculptures of churches, synagogues, mosques, mausolea, ritual objects and reliquaries created from munitions, the exhibition examines the relationships between religion and violence, peace and brutality, the sacred and the unholy.

The sculptures—miniatures in surprisingly ornate detail—have been described as haunting, beautiful, disturbing, powerful, mesmerizing, visceral, exquisite, and jarring. Crafted with guns and gun parts, bullets, lead shot, shell casings, steel, bone, glass, and cluster bomb, the defining contradictory words aptly portray the majesty of the arched clerestories, complexly illustrated geometric patterns, magnificently constructed flying buttresses, gables, spires and minarets that characterize the sculptures and the materials used to craft them.

Al Farrow, Bombed Mosque, 2010. Image courtesy of the artist