Nate Lewis “Tuning the Current”

Fridman Gallery

[Image: Nate Lewis "Tuning the calibration of his weather" (2022) hand-sculpted inkjet print, ink, graphite, frottage, 70 x 44 in.]

This event has ended.

Fridman Gallery presents Tuning the Current, the second solo exhibition with the gallery by mixed-media artist Nate Lewis.

Following the critically and widely acclaimed 2020 exhibition Latent Tapestries, Lewis has extended his signature paper-carving techniques to explore connections among the visual languages of dance movement, anatomy, medical diagnostics and weather-pattern data. In the process he raises questions about the interrelatedness of physical movement, history and healing, particularly (but not only) in the context of African diasporic art and culture. Tuning the Current includes several new bodies of work: a series of life-size sculpted prints of figures in motion; abstract handmade paper “quilts” related in texture and patterns to the figurative works; and a multi-channel audio-visual installation representing a significant new step in Lewis’s ongoing relationship with mixed media.

Lewis is recognized for his intricate works on paper, which combine elements of photography, printmaking, sculpture and drawing. The figurative works in Lewis’s new exhibition feature dancers caught in motion with limbs intertwined against backgrounds of embossed textures, fabric rubs, colored inks and curvilinear shapes, which not only envelop but also respond to the movement, appearing as sound waves and currents. Lewis sculpts patterns and textures akin to cellular tissue and topography. Rather than serving as a medium, the paper is transformed into the subject. This transformation is especially pronounced in Lewis’s abstract paper “quilts”, which are reminiscent of East-Asian painting scrolls. Handmade from pulp, they are microcosms of fundamental life forces – water, pressure, matter and chance. The abstract pieces are a kind of connective tissue for the exhibition – they relate to the textures and patterns of Lewis’s figurative works, and reach the depth of perception achieved by the incorporation of medical diagnostic imagery in his videos.