Nate Lowman

Nate Lowman will join the Brooklyn Rail for a public conversation with artist, curator, and critic Andrew Woolbright. A part of the Brooklyn Rail’s series The New Social Environment, where the magazine hosts a dialogue between an established artist and critic or academic each weekday, the conversation will conclude with a poetry reading by Heidi Van Horn. 

The event will take place on Zoom on Tuesday, March 29, beginning at 1:00 PM ET / 10:00 AM PT. Archived episodes to The New Social Environment can be found on the Brooklyn Rail’s YouTube channel.

To learn more about this event and register, visit the Brooklyn Rail.

Studio is an online series highlighting recent works by gallery artists. Focusing on a different solo project each time, the series situates artists’ work in their current studio practices through personal snapshots, audio/video recordings, and reference materials.

This edition debuts a new body of work by Nate Lowman, also on view at The Armory Show, that builds upon the artist’s distinctive process by introducing a new gestural technique to his practice.

(New York, London & Hong Kong — May 24, 2019) David Zwirner is pleased to announce the representation of American artist Nate Lowman.

The gallery is planning a solo exhibition for fall 2019 in London, where the artist will debut a new series of paintings. This will be the first show of Lowman's work in London since his 2016 exhibition at Massimo De Carlo, who will continue to work with the artist.

As stated by David Zwirner, "The gallery is excited to represent Nate Lowman, an artist whose career I have been following with interest for many years. His critical engagement with contemporary culture as much as with art history is evident in his strikingly relevant works. We are so thrilled to be able to share his newest body of paintings in his upcoming solo exhibition with us in London."

Nate Lowman’s (b. 1979) work was the subject of a solo exhibition at Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, in 2018. Other recent solo presentations at public institutions include those at the Aspen Art Museum, Colorado (2017); FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France (2016); Dallas Contemporary, Texas (2015); Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich, Connecticut (2012); Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo (2009); and Midway Contemporary Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota (2006).

The artist’s work has also been featured in significant group exhibitions including Storylines: Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2015); Second Chances, Aspen Art Museum, Colorado (2015); Themes & Variations: The Empire of Light, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (2014); Three Blind Mice, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium (2014); To Be With Art Is All We Ask, Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo (2012); George Herms: Xenophilia (Love of the Unknown), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2011); The Luminous Interval: The D. Daskalopoulos Collection, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain (2011); The Last Newspaper, New Museum, New York (2010); Fresh Hell, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2010); Off the Wall: Part 1 – Thirty Performative Actions, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2010); and Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010).

Work by Lowman is held in numerous public collections including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He lives and works in New York.

For all press inquiries, contact
Julia Lukacher +1 212 727 2070 [email protected]

Image: Nate Lowman, Red Car, Brooklyn, 2016 (detail)

Astrup Fearnley Museet is continuing its 25th anniversary celebration with the opening of Nate Lowman – Works from the Astrup Fearnley Collection, the third of the series of anniversary exhibitions that are aimed at highlighting key artists in the museum’s collection.

Nate Lowman was rapidly acknowledged as one of the rising stars of the New York art world in the early 2000s, known for his sharp and witty twists on appropriation and the hierarchy of taste in art. Through his use and manipulation of visual elements drawn from popular culture, news stories and graffiti, as well as his use of smiley faces and bumper stickers, he focuses attention on the glorification of violence, the cultivation of celebrity, and political conditions in American society. His large collage works juxtapose references from art history with media reports about events and life stories, and conjure a wide variety of possibilities and richly evocative, open-ended stories. This constellation of objects and motifs creates a personalized and complex narrative, often holding clear references to, and an underlying criticism of, American society.

The Astrup Fearnley Collection includes a number of Lowman’s key works of the past 14 years, of which Studio Terrane (2017) is the most recent. They range from silkscreens and sculptures to his distinctive alkyd paintings and large wall collages that combine materials appropriated from popular culture with his own painted and sculptural works.

Nate Lowman: Before and After is the first comprehensive museum exhibition that traces the work of New York–based painter, sculptor, and installation artist Nate Lowman. The exhibition explores the concept of desire in Lowman’s work, highlighting his frequent use of imagery and language drawn from American popular culture: angels, poppies, hearts, pine-tree air fresheners, smiley faces, iconic celebrities, crosses, and news articles. His work produces nostalgic and often melancholic objects that critique the cult of celebrity, material consumption, and violence. His research and cataloguing are done in an effort to preserve the things of modern life that often go unnoticed, humorously bringing into focus pieces that leave a lasting impression on viewers—ones that provoke longing and a sense of desire.

Lowman’s exhibition is presented in a salon-style arrangement, in which artworks are presented in greater density on the wall, extending above and below the typical, single-row display at eye-level found in most contemporary museums. By using techniques such as shaped canvases and photo-transfer process of painting, the artist asks us to look deeper than what our first glance might capture. Beyond what might be a perceived flatness, Lowman’s paintings have great variation, complexity, and flaws that are imbued with a sense of humor and curiosity. Further, by mixing unlikely pairings of cultural icons and relics (such as objects of antiquity, hearts, and the Shell Oil Company logo) with his personal memories and perception, the galleries are transformed into spaces that can have different meanings to each visitor.