Like many others, Zac Beaver is a working artist. He spends his days on construction sites, from which he often salvages the old windows that serve as surfaces for his paintings. On display at New Boon(e) in a solo exhibition called “Awake in the High,” a collection of these wily, reverse acrylic paintings on glass demonstrates Beaver’s pop-cultural and personal background, illustrative style and wit. Zac Beaver, “89 DangerCart II.” Each piece by Beaver is not only a standalone idea isolated from a greater narrative, but generally also a single image portrayed alone in the ether. By applying paint to the back side of his transparent material of choice, these creations could feasibly exist in any environment in which they are placed, since their surroundings would be perfectly visible through the unpainted sections of window. In the gallery setting, however, these depictions emerge from a field of whitewashed purity; a celestial blank slate of colorless void. Zac Beaver, “Uncle Drew.” Our memories often take a form quite similar to Beaver’s absent settings, occurring as nostalgic ideations instead of objectively honest reflections on the past. As such, many of the scenes Beaver depicts are based on his memories, family stories, or other personal content. Take, for instance, the title image of the show: “Uncle Drew.” Surrounded by a simple, silver frame, we find two men in sleeveless shirts kissing each other passionately in front of a metal barricade as a pair of police officers behind them look on. As evidenced by the title, one of these men is Beaver’s uncle, who participated in ACT UP protests in the 1980s in order to push for the approval of experimental AIDS drugs. Clearly, Zac Beaver himself was not present, but the myth of his uncle’s dissent still stokes his imagination as both a piece of history and a memory he never had. Zac Beaver, “Mr. Philadelphia (Meek Mill).” It might at first seem like Beaver’s entire exhibit consists of bits of his past, but that would be a hasty conclusion. The artist also manages to glean arbitrary snippets from popular culture to complement his own experiences. Notably, there is a picture of Bill Clinton playing the saxophone, a portrait of Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill taking off his tie, and even a shot of a house caught in a Los Angeles landslide. Zac Beaver, “LA Landslide.” This pairing of the private and the pervasive draws both ends together into a neat package of intangible grandeur. After all, neither one of these – the distant past nor the headlines that happen in faraway places – can truly be captured, except through the peculiar alchemy of painting. This is not to say that just because Beaver brings his content full circle that the representations themselves are clean and orderly. In fact, despite the overall vision, the individual works tend to be underscored by a grungy, stylized vision of reality.   Illustrative qualities abound here, with dark outlines scratchily bordering chunks of color and exaggerated features. Behind many of these images, the paint casts strange drop shadows, adding an almost always unnecessary sense of depth that is visually alluring even when not relevant. The nagging feeling of constantly looking out of (or into) a window lingers throughout, and even the organic forms of plant studies contain discarded cigarette butts. This dark humor hangs in the show as if it were a smoke-filled bar, and pieces like “A Log” call to mind grittier illustration and animation along the lines of Ren and Stimpy cartoons, while his actual line work is described by the gallery as more Hanna-Barbera. By slipping the abrasive slyly amidst the subdued, these extracted bits of experience are abrupt, irreverent and unexpected. Calling on individual and collective experience, Beaver paints his recollections and impressions as a staccato montage of faces, places and wildly contrasting themes. Like a waking dream or a memory clouded by the haze of time, they are incomplete, yet highly specific corners of the world glimpsed through ramshackle windows and wrought with sketchy lines. “Awake in the High” was on display from May 1-3.   New Boon(e) is located at 253 N. 3rd St., Philadelphia; [email protected]; newboone.squarespace.com.