Nate Lowman "This Neighborhood's Changed"
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Nate Lowman
From April 26 to May 25, 2025, Gallery Common is delighted to present “This Neighborhood‘s Changed (Curated by Matt Black),” American artist Nate Lowman’s first exhibition in Japan. An opening reception for the artist will be held on April 25, 7-9 PM.
Born in Las Vegas and based in New York, Lowman has been active since the early 2000s, when he first gained recognition for his takes on American pop culture. Curated by NY-based curator Matt Black, Lowman’s first solo exhibition in Japan will consist of a series of completely new works as well as a look back on some of the artist’s most iconic pieces. Combining art historical homages, a personal lexicon of cultural ideograms, and politically suggestive imagery such as American golf courses and satellite images of hurricanes, the exhibition showcases the evolution and mutation of recurring motifs within Lowman’s practice. Following the past few years of topical exhibitions, this time Lowman returns his focus to the provocative act of appropriation itself– highlighting how, within an accelerating society, repetition and reframing of the familiar can serve as landmarks for navigating and restructuring meaning.
With a knack for turning mundane objects into icons loaded with symbolism, Lowman has crafted a visual language of his own over the past twenty years. Perhaps his most instantly recognizable works are his bullet-hole shaped canvases. Titled after various car models– Escalade, Maxima, Nissan Altima– the works are inspired by realistic bullet hole magnets that are sold in America as car decorations. Rendered in the grainy resolution of a black-and-white photocopy so as to seem absurdly cartoonish, the work highlights the ways in which violent gun culture in America has been not only normalized through endless media coverage, but often even glorified and aestheticized, as through the car accessories.
The themes of violence, commercialism, and mass media in this seminal work extend throughout Lowman’s entire practice. The grainy, photocopy-esque finish of the bullet hole works can be found in both Drippy Marilyn (2012) and Burning Palm (2025), the oldest and newest works in the show. The black dots and lines mimic the detached nature of print reproduction, but considering that the newspaper has become largely obsolete within the span of time between the two works, the effect takes on a new meaning in this exhibition, becoming a literal showcase of the accelerated entropy Lowman has already addressed in past works like his 2014 piece The Snowman (a bronze statue of a snowman bearing a sign reading 'I'll be dead soon').
The snowman motif returns in this show, painted, ironically, with the image of a palm tree. These paradisal trees appear multiple times throughout the show. A closer inspection reveals that they seem to be situated not on beaches or tropical jungles, but on stretches of flat green. A reference from Lowman’s recent series featuring golf courses, the artificially planted palm trees here appear dramatic and ghostly, another victim of corporate overdevelopment alienated in a sterile landscape. The subject finds its beautiful but violent demise in the fiery painting Burning Palm, an image from the recent LA wildfires. Milton (2025), based on a satellite rendering of a hurricane, extends this narrative, presenting a colorful, deceptively pleasing image of ecological disaster.
A selection of works on paper centering on related hurricane and golf course imagery will be displayed alongside a deeper look into the process behind Aira's Ovenbird (2024), a work inspired by Argentine author Cesar Aira’s short story of the same name. A tale of a bird that has an existential crisis trying to build his nest on a rainy day, the work comically references Munch’s The Scream– the shrieking figure of which appears again in other works in the show, imprisoned within a pine tree air freshener and golf course sand trap.
This existential anxiety is also reflected in works like the cross-shaped painting Stay Out (2024). A play on the terms used to label pipes at construction sites (“STAY” for functioning pipes, “OUT” for what can be removed) the cross functions as a tongue-in-cheek jab at the Catholic underpinnings of the art world, while posing the question of whether anybody wants to “come in” in the first place.
Like kanji radicals rearranged to form new characters, Lowman resuses and reframes the familiar to find meaning in the noise, showing us how even the most saturated symbols can still sting. In a world where both everything and nothing is news, these images turn repetition into both a survival tactic and a warning. Lowman’s first exhibition in Japan is a timely confrontation of Tokyo’s romanticized obsession with Americana—a reminder that the American fantasy is fraying; the neighborhood’s changed.
Born in Las Vegas and based in New York, Lowman has been active since the early 2000s, when he first gained recognition for his takes on American pop culture. Curated by NY-based curator Matt Black, Lowman’s first solo exhibition in Japan will consist of a series of completely new works as well as a look back on some of the artist’s most iconic pieces. Combining art historical homages, a personal lexicon of cultural ideograms, and politically suggestive imagery such as American golf courses and satellite images of hurricanes, the exhibition showcases the evolution and mutation of recurring motifs within Lowman’s practice. Following the past few years of topical exhibitions, this time Lowman returns his focus to the provocative act of appropriation itself– highlighting how, within an accelerating society, repetition and reframing of the familiar can serve as landmarks for navigating and restructuring meaning.
With a knack for turning mundane objects into icons loaded with symbolism, Lowman has crafted a visual language of his own over the past twenty years. Perhaps his most instantly recognizable works are his bullet-hole shaped canvases. Titled after various car models– Escalade, Maxima, Nissan Altima– the works are inspired by realistic bullet hole magnets that are sold in America as car decorations. Rendered in the grainy resolution of a black-and-white photocopy so as to seem absurdly cartoonish, the work highlights the ways in which violent gun culture in America has been not only normalized through endless media coverage, but often even glorified and aestheticized, as through the car accessories.
The themes of violence, commercialism, and mass media in this seminal work extend throughout Lowman’s entire practice. The grainy, photocopy-esque finish of the bullet hole works can be found in both Drippy Marilyn (2012) and Burning Palm (2025), the oldest and newest works in the show. The black dots and lines mimic the detached nature of print reproduction, but considering that the newspaper has become largely obsolete within the span of time between the two works, the effect takes on a new meaning in this exhibition, becoming a literal showcase of the accelerated entropy Lowman has already addressed in past works like his 2014 piece The Snowman (a bronze statue of a snowman bearing a sign reading 'I'll be dead soon').
The snowman motif returns in this show, painted, ironically, with the image of a palm tree. These paradisal trees appear multiple times throughout the show. A closer inspection reveals that they seem to be situated not on beaches or tropical jungles, but on stretches of flat green. A reference from Lowman’s recent series featuring golf courses, the artificially planted palm trees here appear dramatic and ghostly, another victim of corporate overdevelopment alienated in a sterile landscape. The subject finds its beautiful but violent demise in the fiery painting Burning Palm, an image from the recent LA wildfires. Milton (2025), based on a satellite rendering of a hurricane, extends this narrative, presenting a colorful, deceptively pleasing image of ecological disaster.
A selection of works on paper centering on related hurricane and golf course imagery will be displayed alongside a deeper look into the process behind Aira's Ovenbird (2024), a work inspired by Argentine author Cesar Aira’s short story of the same name. A tale of a bird that has an existential crisis trying to build his nest on a rainy day, the work comically references Munch’s The Scream– the shrieking figure of which appears again in other works in the show, imprisoned within a pine tree air freshener and golf course sand trap.
This existential anxiety is also reflected in works like the cross-shaped painting Stay Out (2024). A play on the terms used to label pipes at construction sites (“STAY” for functioning pipes, “OUT” for what can be removed) the cross functions as a tongue-in-cheek jab at the Catholic underpinnings of the art world, while posing the question of whether anybody wants to “come in” in the first place.
Like kanji radicals rearranged to form new characters, Lowman resuses and reframes the familiar to find meaning in the noise, showing us how even the most saturated symbols can still sting. In a world where both everything and nothing is news, these images turn repetition into both a survival tactic and a warning. Lowman’s first exhibition in Japan is a timely confrontation of Tokyo’s romanticized obsession with Americana—a reminder that the American fantasy is fraying; the neighborhood’s changed.
Schedule | Apr 26 (Sat) 2025-May 25 (Sun) 2025 Opening Hours Information
Opening Reception Apr 25 (Fri) 2025 19:00 - 22:00 | ||||
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| Fee | Free | ||||
| Website | https://www.gallerycommon.com/en/exhibitions/this-neighborhood-s-changed | ||||
| Venue | Gallery Common | ||||
| Location | B1F, 5-39-6 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0001 | ||||
| Access | 6 minute walk from exit A1 at Omotesando Station on the Hanzomon, Chiyoda and Ginza lines. 8 minute walk from exit 7 at Meiji-jingumae Station on the Chiyoda and Fukutoshin lines. 9 minute walk from exit B7 at JR Shibuya Station. | ||||
| Phone | 03-6427-3827 | ||||
| Related images | Click on the image to enlarge it       |
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