zachreini.com  /  hayley hooper  /  zach barnes  /  jason abrams
Demolition Hammer (Big T-shirt #1)
Zach Reini
latex, acrylic, decals, super glue on
wood
38” x 46.5” x 1.5”
2025
Necroicon (the unbearable weight of my own self-image)
Zach Barnes
drawing pad, permanent marker
25” x 18” x 1”
2025
Untitled (Hyperborea Study)
Hayley Hooper
oil on panel
6” x 6” x 1”
2024

Untitled (The Apologies VI)
Hayley Hooper
oil and acrylic on panel
16” x 20” x 1.5”
2024

Acme Death Trap
Jason Abrams
foam, paint, rope, gaffer tape
Installation Dimensions Vary
2025
HEAVY is a group exhibition inspired by heavy metal music exploring themes of darkness, emotional weight, negation and even the comical and the absurd. 

Zach Reini’s piece Demolition Hammer (Big T-shirt #1) is an interpretation of a metal band tour shirt. Commemorating the 1992 “North American Violence” tour by thrash metal band Demolition Hammer, the piece includes the original misspellings with addition of fake bullet hole car decals. It speaks about the American lust and idealization of violence.The imagery and musical inspiration are aggressive and brutal, but the piece is also comical – the large scale, the falseness of the bullet hole stickers - it is, after all, just a t-shirt. 

Necroicon (the unbearable weight of my own self-image) by Zach Barnes is a common drawing pad blacked out with Sharpie permanent markers. The material is very central – the Sharpie marker - ever present in the hardcore and punk scenes and angsty teen notebooks. They even possess a tell-tale odor – the stink of the fumes of permanent marker. Rooted in a more formal and conceptual approach, the artist has avoided imagery, focusing more on the qualities of the marker and the labor involved in filling the page. The concepts of crossing out and obliteration are evoked, reminiscent of redacted documents issued by government agencies. Here the act of obliteration and negation are central, creating an art object through the blacking out and obstruction of the page.

Artist Hayley Hooper created her mysterious landscape paintings from “plein air” studies, drawing outside and capturing the scene at dusk. Hooper described the immediacy dictated by the plein air approach at twilight; one is forced to make quick decisions as darkness settles on the land. The landscapes are heavily abstracted, focusing more on the feeling and memory of a specific natural place. They have a solemn beauty and sense of melancholy. The artist described taking inspiration from early morning hunting trips with her father, the sensation of following closely behind, able to see little more than the legs in front and the constricted view of the surrounding landscape in the semi-darkness.

Acme Death Trap by Jason Abrams is a very literal response to the theme, manifested as a sculptural cartoon anvil suspended with rope. The piece employs the visual language of a Wile E. Coyote cartoon, perhaps relating to the artist’s illustration and comic book background. However, the creation of a three-dimensional sculptural object is fresh territory for the artist. It is silly, but also a bit menacing, the anvil hanging overhead and the “X” mark on the floor constitute a violent trap waiting to be sprung.

Developing a theme for a group exhibition is a precarious thing. There is the conceptual framework created at the onset and the often different ideas and emotions expressed in the resulting work. Therein lies much of the excitement and discovery of the curation and art making process. HEAVY is a show that is both serious and comical, traditionally beautiful as well as rejecting aesthetic conventions, emotionally dense and aggressive but also lighthearted and not taking itself too seriously. 

- Kevin Baer, Curator