“The biggest failure of humans is miscommunication. We can't communicate with each other – we can fight, we can kill, we can do those things well. Language is the most beautiful and destructive thing…”
Nate Lowman, Interview Magazine 2009
To Nate Lowman, America is a country built on violence. His famed bullet holes punch through gallery walls, crashing a matrix of Pop culture influences into a decisive graphic statement. Sharing the dualism of cultural commentary and glamorous irreverence with his forefather Warhol, whose work with repetition and images from mass culture irrevocably altered the field of contemporary art. The impact and relevance of Lowman’s oeuvre is testament to a ferociously keen eye for the pathologies of modern America; his trash aesthetic embodies atrocity and excess with brash aplomb, but finds a terrible beauty in the wreckage.
Concerned with the compulsions that drive our cultural fascination with death and violent crime, Lowman’s gunshots offer a multiplicity of significances. Its central void is ominous and the vivid red that the artist employs alludes to the fatal consequence and aggressive intent of the gunshot, however the vibrancy of the colour defies the viewer to admire it as a thing of beauty. This is then further trivialised by the cartoonish quality of the bullet hole, and the jagged form that is reminiscent of kitsch air fresheners. The common theme of violence and destruction, which runs throughout Lowman’s work, is clearly evident; however this is offset by the beauty of the dynamic canvas and ‘Pop Art’ process he employs.