Night Light, 2020
20” x 16”
acrylic on canvas
Zach portrays a picturesque village from atop a nearby cliff.
We invite you to jump in…
Zach Barnard is a Virginia-born artist who has sold over 30 original paintings and more than 40 commissioned paintings in addition to creating Hidden Moments, an immersive public art installation.
A colorist at heart, Zach’s work is big, bold, and expressive with swift gestures and broad brushstrokes reminiscent of Post-Impressionists and the Fauves. From glowing streetlamps to moonlit hallways, he reveals the romance and sensuality of nightscapes.
Each painting is a journey across place and time – with a style echoing the aesthetics of Henri Matisse and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner who reinterpreted art in a fresh, contemporary way that’s beautifully relevant to today’s world.
Zach graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree and a minor in Art History from Columbia College Chicago, where he was a 2018 winner of the Albert Weisman Award. Lately of the Leigh Gallery in Chicago, Zach’s work has been featured in both solo and group shows as well as in a variety of print and online publications.
Conversation with Zach:
How would you describe your installation?
This installation is an ode to the quirky, cliché romances found in the quiet corners of the night, taking inspiration from the Italian fishing village Cinque de Terre. Night Lights is a micro-immersive experience through which the viewer is transported from the mundane monotony of normal life and into a glowing landscape full of color and koi mystery.
What do you want visitors to take away from your installation?
Night Lights, fondly given the nickname “Tiny Town,” isn’t supposed to take itself too seriously. The vantage point of the painting is from high above, atop an adjacent cliff.
From here, the viewer looks across at the village, glowing and alive. I ask the viewer to step back and enjoy the scenery as if they were looking down at the same village and to pretend, just for a moment, how they might wander down into the curving streets of the night.
What were some of the challenges you faced?
The challenges I faced included, of course, working off location and making my installation fluid enough to change within the space on site. Even among the trials and tribulations of the pandemic, Night Lights was able to change into a more suitable layout than had been previously expected.
The tiny houses and buildings can be arranged any which way, making the installation flexible enough to change on a dime according to the venue. This also gives freedom for Night Lights to change and evolve time and time again.
Will you consider a more immersive medium for your artwork in the future?
My installations are all about the viewer being fully and totally immersed.
From the visuals to the lighting, and even the trill of live music, all senses are stimulated, giving the viewer the hope of transportation far away from their everyday life to a moment we all yearn to be a part of, a hidden moment that can only be found within art.
How has the process of this installation transformed the way you think about your work?
In the past, my installations, including my most immersive collection, Hidden Moments, were full-room installations, usually taking place in smaller, less formal settings. Having Night Lights be within a gallery setting, I wanted to create an experience that made a small place feel as large as possible.
Changing the perspective from inside a singular room or building to overlooking an entire cityscape gave me a different perspective of what my own art could be.
Installation Process:
Zach created two preliminary sketches of his vision for transforming his 2-dimensional work Night Light into a 3-dimensional installation.
Zach constructed the night-time backdrop and colorful buildings in Virginia, then shipped the completed materials to the Hokin gallery team in Chicago.
The Hokin team collaborated with Zach over email and video calls while assembling the installation. The design was intended to be fully immersive: each visitor would have entered the installation tower from below, emerging amongst the buildings.
The Hokin team and Zach were pleased with the completed installation; however, the intimate nature of the design had to be re-envisioned over the summer due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The originally enclosed tower was replaced with an open installation. The team laid the painted backdrop over a table, covered it with plexiglass, and built an additional portion of sky to extend along the right side of the table. They then mounted the buildings onto wooden bases, positioned them around the table, and illuminated the installation with string lights.
