Nate Lowman

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.