Nate Lowman (b. 1979)

'The bullet holes were a good opportunity to have the cultural things that I'm interested in come together... It was a step in a different direction. I still wanted it to be about stuff, not just be like "this looks like art and it's on the wall". I wanted it to have content.'

(N. Lowman, interviewed by Asher Penn in Bad Day Magazine, Issue 5, Summer 2009, reproduced at: https://asherpenn.tripod.com/natelowman.html)

A silkscreen of a bullet hole rendered in a cartoonish Pop aesthetic, White Maxima is a piercing critique of gun culture in contemporary American society. Part of a series which defines the early stage of Lowman's career, White Maxima is an instantly recognisable work by this young American artist. Frequently employing strategies of collage and appropriation, manipulating contemporary visual elements to generate a double edged critique of American culture, Lowman's style has fast become highly distinctive. White Maxima counterbalances the inherent violence of the bullet wound with the lighter connotations of Pop art implied in its jagged outline, recasting a familiar motif in a new, more critical way.