Nathan Lewis
Tissue II
Nathan Lewis has always made figurative and abstract drawings, which are related to anatomical textures and patterns he encountered when working as an ICU nurse. Hence the title of this work, Tissue II, is a spare and elegant work, in which the artist combines hand sculpted paper with embossment and frottage for the first time in his practice. The effect recalls African weaving and skin embellishment, but also reflects the influence of his former job as an intensive-care nurse, seeking to heal the most damaged. Tissue II reflects how the artist’s practice remains closely connected to the body, in particular to skin, which as a membrane is vulnerable and prone to scarring, for unintentional as well as beatific reasons.
Lewis’s work often centers African-American figures in he explores empathy and what empathy looks like outside of the hospital. In other works, he sometimes cuts and scrapes black-and-white photographic portraits, removing pigment while adding patterns and flocked textures. In his intricate works on paper, incisions and gashes are not sewn back together. The wounds remain wide open, irremediable narratives in their current condition, as if taking the scalpel to society.
Nathan Lewis’s unfeigned drawings have evolved out of the nine years he worked as a critical care nurse at a Washington, D.C. hospital. As he describes himself, his work is influenced by the rhythms and records of people’s lives – vulnerability, empathy and care.
A significant influence on the artist’s work is jazz music, which dates back to his childhood when he played the violin. He often references his music contemporaries as inspirations, in particular Josiah McRaven, Kassa Overall, and Matana Roberts. Another influence and the source of movement and rhythm in his work comes from his practice of Capoeira, a martial art camouflaging as dance, invented by enslaved Africans in Brazil. Capoeira, with its connection to music, gives shape to the temporal, cumulative meditative process of how Lewis develops his drawings. Lewis also considers Milford Graves as another important influence; Graves is an artist who also connects healing, martial arts, sound and visual art in a unique, autodidactic way. Lewis is involved in Wide Awakes, an artist collective that raises political participation ("joyful resistance") through performance and happenings, after the Wide Awakes of the 1860s.