ink, acrylic, and pastel on paper

Adam Hayes

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Men without a country. Men in search of themselves. Contemporary ideas about masculinity are often reliant on ideas about femininity, which means that it is constantly being challenged, redefined, or maligned. In Adam Hayes’s latest body of work, he layers images of early photography from the Old West with forms of professional wrestlers in struggle. Spaghetti western absurdist tropes highlighting toxic masculinity as the apex of manhood alongside a show of brute strength. But Hayes is not presenting these images as a critic but rather an examination of the guttural response, the fight, and the animal in man.