On Friday, October 26, MCA Denver will be hosting a pop-up mural: The Gun Chronicles:  A Story Of America by artist JR . The 4-minute mural will be on loop from 5PM–9PM and we will offer free admission during that time to the museum.

TIME Magazine and JR are partnering on a special issue coming out on October 25th exploring the wide-ranging points of view surrounding the gun debate in the United States. There are more than 300 million guns in North America, 88 for every 100 people - by far the highest percentage of gun ownership in the world. The U.S. has correspondingly high incidents of mass shootings, murder, and suicide by guns. Gun control is one of the most bitterly partisan issues in the country.

JR’s collaboration with TIME will be featured as the magazine’s cover. The cover work highlights a mural by JR which combines his portraits of hundreds of individuals, giving a face to the full and complex spectrum of views on guns in America, including: gun collectors, hunters, law enforcement officials, shooting victims, emergency room teams that have worked on victims of mass shootings, and lobbyists for the industry.

JR and his team have created a live mural of each person featured in the project. Individuals were filmed in slow motion, interacting with someone else in the mural, creating a living artwork which vividly depicts the issue. Each side of the issue is represented by individuals and groups sharing their stories and visual interactions. Only through art can all these people, with such opposing views, be brought together.

As he remains anonymous and doesn’t explain his huge full-frame portraits of people making faces, JR leaves the space empty for an encounter between the subject/protagonist and the passer-by/interpreter. That is what JR's work is about, raising questions...

JR is represented by Galerie Perrotin and PACE Gallery; he has had shows in Paris, Hong-Kong, Miami and New York. JR is also represented by Lazarides in London, Magda Danysz in Shanghai, Simon Studer Art in Geneva and Springmann Gallery in Berlin, Deitch Projects in NYC.