Artist, Nate Lowman is using one of the most devastating scenes in recent history, for his first show with mega-dealer David Zwirner. Two years ago today, a gunman opened fire in Las Vegas killing 58 people in the deadliest mass shooting in American history.
Hideous monster Stephen Paddock took a room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hoteland targeted concertgoers from his window. (He turned the gun on himself.) Lowman opens the show in London one day after the two-year anniversary of the crime.
The Vegas-born artist has taken on gun violence before, creating sculptures of bank teller windows shattered by gunshots. Here, Lowman used photographs of the crime scene and, according to the gallery’s press release,
“began translating the images, one by one, into paintings, in part as an attempt to grapple with the unanswerable questions posed by the shooting.”
The images are rather generic, grainy crime-scene images that are nonetheless chilling. A hotel room door handle, was shot by Paddock to keep police from getting into his room is Picture 1 while Picture 4 is of a room service cart in the hallway.
Previously represented by Maccarone, Lowman signed with Zwirner this May and the dealer praised the artist in a statement, saying,
“his critical engagement with contemporary culture as much as with art history is evident in his strikingly relevant works.”
Nate Lowman: October 1, 2017 is on view at David Zwirner, 24 Grafton Street, London, October 3–November 9, 2019.
(Images, Nate Lowman/David Zwirner; via Artnet News)