Nate Lowman Has Painted Chilling Scenes From the 2017 Las Vegas Massacre for His New Show at David Zwirner

For his first show with David Zwirner, artist Nate Lowman will confront one of the
most devastating scenes in recent history: when a gunman opened
fire at a music festival in Las Vegas two years ago, killing 58
people in what remains the deadliest mass shooting in American
history.

Gunman Stephen Paddock, holed up on the 32nd floor of the nearby
Mandalay Bay Hotel targeted concertgoers from his window before
turning the weapon on himself. Lowman, who was born in Las Vegas, has
titled the exhibition after that fateful day and the show will open
in London the day after the two-year anniversary of the crime on
October 1.

The artist, perhaps best-known for his bullet hole paintings,
has grappled with gun violence in the past, creating sculptures of
bank teller windows shattered by gunshots. Here, Lowman was
inspired by photographs of the Las Vegas crime scene released by
police, and “began translating the images, one by one, into
paintings, in part as an attempt to grapple with the unanswerable
questions posed by the shooting,” according to the gallery’s press
release.

Unlike the harrowingly chaotic photographs taken by
photojournalists on the ground during and immediately following the
shooting, which highlight the terror and violence of the event, the
crime scene images are almost clinically detached.

A generic door handle, shot by Paddock to keep police from
accessing his room, is shown in Lowman’s Picture
1 (2019), while Picture 4 (2018)
captures a room service cart in the hallway leading up to his hotel
room. The more abstract Picture 26 (2018) is
based on a photo of bullet residue on fuel tanks at nearby McCarran
International Airport.

Previously represented by Maccarone gallery, Lowman signed
with Zwirner in May. At the time, 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.”

The artist had solo exhibitions in 2018 at Gagosian Gallery in
New York, the Astrup Fearnley Museum in Oslo, and Massimo de Carlo
gallery in Milan. In 2012 he was the subject of a solo exhibition
at the Brant Foundation Art Study Center in Greenwich,
Connecticut.

See more works from the upcoming show below.

“Nate Lowman: October 1,
2017” will be on view at David Zwirner, 24 Grafton Street,
London, October 3–November 9, 2019.

The post Nate Lowman Has Painted Chilling Scenes From the
2017 Las Vegas Massacre for His New Show at David Zwirner
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