Nate Lowman was born in 1979 in Las Vegas and received a BS from New York University in 2001. His work employs strategies of collage and appropriation, often incorporating and manipulating contemporary visual elements and artifacts such as graffiti, print media, and bumper stickers. The resulting critique of culture reflects on issues such as the cult of celebrity, material consumption, and American gun culture.

 

A diversity of material forms and a lack of singular definition characterize his practice. Large-scale works include a collaboration with artist Dan Colen titled Wet Pain (2008), an installation of a 1971 white Jaguar that had been effectively trashed. The car's hood and door are splayed open, and it has been filled with a tangle of wires. Lowman also sometimes works in repetitive themes: a reflection on gun culture includes a number of both handmade and graphic works such as Bullet Hole (2005), a silkscreen of a bullet hole rendered in a cartoonish Pop aesthetic. A number of works obsessively elaborate on the "smiley face" symbol, ripping it from various sources across decades and locating it in new contexts, including a painting of O. J. Simpson's signature. The painting includes the flourish of a smiley face taken from a letter Simpson sent to fans shortly after his arrest for the brutal murder of his wife and her friend. Once You Pop (2009) is comprised of an empty Pringles can with a roughly cutout, almost menacing smiley face.

 

Lowman has had solo exhibitions at Midway Contemporary Art Center, Minneapolis (2006), and Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo (2009). His work has been included in notable group exhibitions, including those at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Queens, New York (2005); Hessel Museum of Art and the Center for Curatorial Studies Galleries, both at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, and Serpentine Gallery, London (all 2006); the Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art (2007); New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2007); and Busan Biennial, Busan, South Korea (2008). A suite of works was also included in Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010). Lowman lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.