Review in Buffalo News, March 30, 2010

"With this alternately humorous and disturbing installation, Frederick Wright Jones, a graduate student in the University at Buffalo’s visual studies department, makes a loud and compelling statement about the complex connections between gun ownership and race."

"Jones has set up an actual organization under the professed purpose of joining people of different racial and economic backgrounds together to combat the scourge of gun violence. That he has given his organization the provocative title of “National Rifle Association for the Advancement of Colored People” should clue you in to just how serious he is about his prospects for making a dent in that goal."

"The exhibition sets up a number of interesting dichotomies in curious ways. On two tables, a pair of blaring radios face each other. One is tuned to local country station WYRK and the other to local hip hop station WBLK. The effect is a jumble of sound that makes a comment on the pervading debate about gun violence and race, which is often uselessly vitriolic and unintelligible."

"Jones really shows his ability to get under the skin of the debate in his disturbing tableau of ash-smudged puppets on a raised stage, each representing a significant political or historical figure (there’s Gandhi, Dick Cheney, George Washington and one that looks like Moammar Gadhafi) hoisting rifles and handguns. Behind that are two video projections, one featuring an urban stretch of Buffalo and the other a rural road."

"This must-see show goes much deeper, of course, into ideas of historical continuity and the politics and history of black identity. But its strength comes from the way in which Jones characterizes the seemingly intractable debate over these issues. His contribution to that debate, be it arch or serious, is a significant one."

--COLIN DABKOWSKI