Fridman Gallery is honored to existing Tuning the Existing, the 2nd solo exhibition with the gallery by mixed-media artist Nate Lewis. Following the critically and extensively acclaimed 2020 exhibition Latent Tapestries, Lewis has extended his signature paper-carving approaches to examine connections between the visible languages of dance movement, anatomy, medical diagnostics and weather-pattern information. In the procedure he raises inquiries about the interrelatedness of physical movement, history and healing, especially (but not only) in the context of African diasporic artwork and society. Tuning the Current includes quite a few new bodies of function: a collection of existence-dimensions sculpted prints of figures in motion abstract handmade paper “quilts” similar in texture and patterns to the figurative works and a multi-channel audio-visual set up symbolizing a substantial new move in Lewis’s ongoing marriage with mixed media.
Lewis is acknowledged for his intricate is effective on paper, which merge factors of photography, printmaking, sculpture and drawing. The figurative operates in Lewis’s new exhibition attribute dancers caught in movement with limbs intertwined in opposition to backgrounds of embossed textures, cloth rubs, colored inks and curvilinear designs, which not only envelop but also respond to the movement, showing up as sound waves and currents.
Lewis sculpts patterns and textures akin to mobile tissue and topography. Fairly than serving as a medium, the paper is reworked into the subject. This transformation is specially pronounced in Lewis’s abstract paper “quilts”, which are reminiscent of East-Asian painting scrolls. Handmade from pulp, they are microcosms of elementary everyday living forces – h2o, tension, subject and possibility. The abstract pieces are a sort of connective tissue for the exhibition – they relate to the textures and styles of Lewis’s figurative functions, and get to the depth of perception accomplished by the incorporation of clinical diagnostic imagery in his movies.
A series of new online video operates in the gallery’s downstairs media room mixes photographic snapshots of a dancer in movement, healthcare diagnostic imagery, climate patterns, atmospheric and oceanic currents, and starling murmurations. The video clip installation as a full demonstrates the symbiotic interactions amid these seemingly disparate phenomena. Fragments of gestures by the dancer are captured a single at a time, enabling the complete spectrum of the motion to be felt by and sink in with the viewer. Lewis contrasts this contemplative unfurling of movement with distorted, blurred pictures that entreat the viewer to think about language clarity and obfuscation. He also juxtaposes the dance gestures with the movement of blood via the heart as seen in an angiogram, and makes use of imagery manufactured by the mechanisms in CT scans (including individuals of Covid patients’ lungs), MRIs and Ultrasounds that facilitate infinitesimal visualization and prognosis for the reason of healing.
“The diagnostic imagery is critical,” states Lewis. “Medical diagnostics is a unique language essential to comprehending a patient’s condition. These nuanced methods of hunting at and listening to a overall body, profoundly impact how I see, hear, and have an understanding of the globe. In the previous number of yrs they’ve represented the distillation of conflicting forces in our modern society. In unique how societal and pure forces, facts and misinformation, healthcare and accessibility to health care clashed for the duration of the pandemic, revealing the fault traces in society.”
