Nate Lowman: Parking

Nate Lowman (b. 1979) has become known for deftly mining images culled from art history, the news, and popular media, transforming visual signifiers from these distinct sources into a diverse body of paintings, sculptures, and installations. Since the early 2000s, the artist has continually pushed the boundaries of his multimedia approach with works that are at turns critical, humorous, political, and poetic.

A focus of the exhibition in Los Angeles is a new body of work based on found aerial photographs of golf courses, which the artist translates into vibrant paintings that hover ambiguously at the edge of abstraction.

This series expands and extends Lowman’s recent foray into the genre of landscape painting. As is typical of the artist, however, this exploration remains oblique and conceptually layered, often incorporating appropriated images from popular culture, media, and historical sources, which Lowman then recontextualizes into quasi landscapes that prompt viewers to consider broader themes in American culture and media.

Also on view in Los Angeles are a selection of paintings that distinctly evoke an absent figural or narrative presence. Having amassed a visual archive of source material, Lowman often processes the significance of images over time, typically returning to a picture on several occasions before making it the subject of one of his multivalent works.

Aira’s Ovenbird (2024) is inspired by the Argentinian writer César Aira’s short story "The Ovenbird.” Lowman and Aira previously collaborated on an Argentinian publication of Aira's short stories alongside the artist's illustrations, which preceded the present painting.

Installed closely together, these works continue Lowman’s long-standing exploration of salon-style installation methods as well as his use of shaped canvases. These methods intersect in such a way that prompts viewers to look beyond their initial perception of each individual painting and what our first glance might capture.

Also on view is Why Is There Something And Not Nothing? (2024), a new, large-scale bronze sculpture by Lowman combining a freestanding, life-size outline of a snowman, with a cut-out void in the shape of a grandfather clock. The composite motif of these nesting anthropomorphic forms in previous works by the artist, including a 2020 painting with the same title, as well as Autocide (2012), We'll Be Dead Soon (2011), and You Make Me (For Christopher Wool) (2012). Here, he presents a playful counterpoint to traditional monumental figurative sculptures, such as his 2014 sculpture permanently installed in Whitworth Park, Manchester, England.

While the artist rarely creates standalone sculptural works, his interest in the medium can be seen throughout his oeuvre. Lowman has frequently incorporated found objects ranging from car parts to household items into his sculptures, recontextualizing mundane items to create new meaning. This element of his practice can be understood as an extension of his use of collage and assemblage in his paintings, where disparate objects and materials are combined to form a cohesive piece.