An Eclectic, Open-Call Art Show Returns to Works/San José

Hadi Aghaee paints former President Joe Biden with three heads: One as a demonic caricature, another as the Joker, and another as a figure frozen in rage. Biden orders soldiers as he stands atop the back of an American taxpayer whose money is being siphoned to fund wars and global conflicts. Yet the center of attention is on the painting’s namesakes: Baseball, Booze and Beyoncé!

In this visually stimulating scene inspired by Biden’s final year in office, Aghaee critiques America’s fascination with sports and entertainment, and how spectacle distracts from social and political struggles.

“[The government] keeps you busy with entertainment,” Aghaee tells KQED, “so you don’t have time to think about or question what they’re doing.”

His painting will appear in Works/San José’s open-call exhibition, Super Hunger Anti-Valentine Bowl Games Part LX, on view Jan. 24–Feb. 15, 2026.

A similar show was staged there 10 years ago, when the Denver Broncos faced off against the Carolina Panthers at Levi’s Stadium. Back then, the gallery created a deliberate hodgepodge exhibition as part of San José’s broader Super Bowl cultural programming.

Works combined its biennial Anti-Valentine show; America’s obsession with sports; and excitement around The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 movie, released in late 2015. A decade later, these elements have aligned once again: the Super Bowl returns to Levi’s Stadium, anti-Valentine season is back at Works, and a new Hunger Games film will hit theaters in November.

“The mashup thing is just to have fun,” Works President Joe Miller says. “Works is always pushing the envelope a little bit, things that other art spaces say, ‘That’s a little too raw, or that makes me uncomfortable.’ … We’re not concerned about those things. We’re just concerned about: Is it something we haven’t done before? Is it somebody we haven’t shown before? And is their work worth seeing?”

This year’s open call features artwork that pertains to one, two or all three of the respective themes, like Aghaee’s painting, which captures the intersection between sports, love and violence.

A longtime San José resident, Aghaee moved from Shiraz, Iran as a 19-year-old to pursue an engineering degree at Southern Illinois University. Drawing was a hobby he maintained growing up, but immigrating to a new country while learning English and working three jobs to stay afloat put a 35-year halt to his artistic endeavors. It wasn’t until 2014, when a friend recommended he get back into art, that he learned a new medium altogether: painting.

Painting not only became a therapeutic outlet, but a way to comment on the social and political issues going on around him.

“I returned to art, and boy, it’s the best medicine for any problem,” Aghaee says. “Pick up art, whether it’s music or painting or whatever, it really heals. To make it heal even faster, if you think of other people who have problems bigger than yours, you forget about your own problem. It’s all solved, it’s all gone. That’s why I picked up social issues and politics, because when I look at what other people are going through, my problem is nothing.”

Since returning to art making, Aghaee has shown at a variety of Bay Area institutions, including San Francisco’s de Young Museum, the Euphrat Museum of Art at De Anza College, and Santa Clara’s Triton Museum. A common theme in his works are people — a lot of them. Many of his paintings depict crowds in crisis; whether grappling with COVID-19 or experiencing the chaos of election season, his subjects are constantly in turmoil.

Aghaee’s Baseball, Booze and Beyoncé! reflects a different year and different administration, but he finds that imbalance of power remains unresolved in 2026. Those same concerns extend beyond the U.S., as protests in Iran have surged against the Islamic Republic.

Aghaee has watched his home country’s unrest with both urgency and personal grief. These events will inform his next body of work, he says. They are another example of how political power repeatedly fails the people it governs.

“The message is the same,” Aghaee says. “The message even goes with other countries, it’s not just the U.S. A lot of countries put too much of their budget toward military and war. That’s why they don’t have enough money to use for social needs.”

‘Super Hunger Anti-Valentine Bowl Games Part LX’ is on view at Works/San José (38 South Second St., San José) on weekends, Jan. 24–Feb. 15, 2026.