Nate Lowman
Between the map and the territory lie the canyons of the unknown. Philosophy, literature and art are in this sense cultural grout, our attempts 鈥� tragic, comic, noble and vain 鈥� to fill between the tiles of existence. Words, images and thoughts connect states of mind with continents of thought. They soften and blur the outlines we trace on the world. Paintings become flags, jokes become paintings, and the pipe 鈥� regardless of what you choose to put in it 鈥� is no longer a pipe. Pay attention motherfucker, because who are you to say that we live in a world that is black and white, red or blue?
And such, it is with this new body of work the most emblematic of which itself takes the forms of a puzzle, at once social, political, historical and aesthetic. Take it apart and you might never know what it was. Scatter the pieces and you might struggle to recognize Dakota on her side, Carolina upside down or Kansas on the coast? Look at it closely and you鈥檒l see that each one is made of the downtrodden, the drips and spatters of other cultural endeavors. Drop-cloth states, they are to painting what the Turin shroud is to religion 鈥� a shadowy and tenuous claim to a presence greater than their own. Look closer still and it doesn鈥檛 look like America at all. Its contours outline physical boundaries but they also shuttle between the cartographic and the metaphysical 鈥� the idea of a border and the border of an idea: the United Nates of America.
Seen from space, altered states of America and mind disappear and earth is reduced to the familiar clich茅 known by all but witnessed by virtually none. It鈥檚 a view of the world that didn鈥檛 emerge from the exploration and travel but was constructed at birth. The swirling elements of land water and condensation speak not to the place where people live but to the audacity of those who left it behind. Like the map, it鈥檚 an image of questionable authenticity. An immaculate conception born of someone else鈥檚 dreams it would be an event horizon without an event were it not for the meteorite of daub with its attending trifecta of words: South of France, East of Eden, Tae Kwan Do, Never Send a Boy. What the fuck?
Like space debris the cultural junk of literature, hip-hop, and colloquialism orbits our distant planet as if untethered from the gravitas of original meaning. Fine Very Natural might have been the greeting of a grandpa assemblyman, or the health food koan of kombucha or gluten free bubble bath. Perhaps then it comes as no surprise that Roc la Familia, the first of these explorations, started out as a record label founded by Jay-Z before becoming a showcase album born of chemistry and the mix of multiple talents. Like this, it was something akin to a solo group show, a collection of Nates banded together, a jigsaw of elements for which each piece makes up both a part and a whole.
The smaller parts take us away from the world-view and into nature鈥檚 intimates. These are places traced not by the arcs of over-determined fictions but by the small undulations and pulses within the life of object and things. Even as the shrapnel of ideas orbiting their forms seem closer and more familiar, the things depicted are no less abstract than outer space or North America. The empty forms of flowers and leaves have become vessels into which we鈥檝e poured every type of meaning. Sexual decanters they brim with connotation: California poppies that pose as Christmas angels, leaves plucked from the apple logo that speak to the corporate fall from grace, logs culled from fire and driftwood that have been cast and erected to reveal concrete or bronze renderings of the female anatomy.
Abstraction still holds sway, as it did for the air fresheners and other ideas that take the migration paths from popular culture back into art. But between these culturally sanctioned forms can be found the bloom of sexual foliage and other meanings that refuse to be contained. Like weeds finding cracks in the concrete this is where ideas that barely qualify as such can germinate and grow. These are places sufficiently removed from the grand maps of human endeavor to develop their own rituals, beliefs and superstitions, places where pools of homespun expertise, craft and thought lead us from the continent of material fact to the great oceans of the unspoken and unknown. You write the book or make the artwork. You speak its secret name. In doing so you create a situation where it may be enough for just something to make sense 鈥� maybe not the whole caboodle but at least something. And even if it鈥檚 not everything, something is not nothing.
Recommended for you
Between the map and the territory lie the canyons of the unknown. Philosophy, literature and art are in this sense cultural grout, our attempts 鈥� tragic, comic, noble and vain 鈥� to fill between the tiles of existence. Words, images and thoughts connect states of mind with continents of thought. They soften and blur the outlines we trace on the world. Paintings become flags, jokes become paintings, and the pipe 鈥� regardless of what you choose to put in it 鈥� is no longer a pipe. Pay attention motherfucker, because who are you to say that we live in a world that is black and white, red or blue?
And such, it is with this new body of work the most emblematic of which itself takes the forms of a puzzle, at once social, political, historical and aesthetic. Take it apart and you might never know what it was. Scatter the pieces and you might struggle to recognize Dakota on her side, Carolina upside down or Kansas on the coast? Look at it closely and you鈥檒l see that each one is made of the downtrodden, the drips and spatters of other cultural endeavors. Drop-cloth states, they are to painting what the Turin shroud is to religion 鈥� a shadowy and tenuous claim to a presence greater than their own. Look closer still and it doesn鈥檛 look like America at all. Its contours outline physical boundaries but they also shuttle between the cartographic and the metaphysical 鈥� the idea of a border and the border of an idea: the United Nates of America.
Seen from space, altered states of America and mind disappear and earth is reduced to the familiar clich茅 known by all but witnessed by virtually none. It鈥檚 a view of the world that didn鈥檛 emerge from the exploration and travel but was constructed at birth. The swirling elements of land water and condensation speak not to the place where people live but to the audacity of those who left it behind. Like the map, it鈥檚 an image of questionable authenticity. An immaculate conception born of someone else鈥檚 dreams it would be an event horizon without an event were it not for the meteorite of daub with its attending trifecta of words: South of France, East of Eden, Tae Kwan Do, Never Send a Boy. What the fuck?
Like space debris the cultural junk of literature, hip-hop, and colloquialism orbits our distant planet as if untethered from the gravitas of original meaning. Fine Very Natural might have been the greeting of a grandpa assemblyman, or the health food koan of kombucha or gluten free bubble bath. Perhaps then it comes as no surprise that Roc la Familia, the first of these explorations, started out as a record label founded by Jay-Z before becoming a showcase album born of chemistry and the mix of multiple talents. Like this, it was something akin to a solo group show, a collection of Nates banded together, a jigsaw of elements for which each piece makes up both a part and a whole.
The smaller parts take us away from the world-view and into nature鈥檚 intimates. These are places traced not by the arcs of over-determined fictions but by the small undulations and pulses within the life of object and things. Even as the shrapnel of ideas orbiting their forms seem closer and more familiar, the things depicted are no less abstract than outer space or North America. The empty forms of flowers and leaves have become vessels into which we鈥檝e poured every type of meaning. Sexual decanters they brim with connotation: California poppies that pose as Christmas angels, leaves plucked from the apple logo that speak to the corporate fall from grace, logs culled from fire and driftwood that have been cast and erected to reveal concrete or bronze renderings of the female anatomy.
Abstraction still holds sway, as it did for the air fresheners and other ideas that take the migration paths from popular culture back into art. But between these culturally sanctioned forms can be found the bloom of sexual foliage and other meanings that refuse to be contained. Like weeds finding cracks in the concrete this is where ideas that barely qualify as such can germinate and grow. These are places sufficiently removed from the grand maps of human endeavor to develop their own rituals, beliefs and superstitions, places where pools of homespun expertise, craft and thought lead us from the continent of material fact to the great oceans of the unspoken and unknown. You write the book or make the artwork. You speak its secret name. In doing so you create a situation where it may be enough for just something to make sense 鈥� maybe not the whole caboodle but at least something. And even if it鈥檚 not everything, something is not nothing.
Artists on show
