Nate Lewis is a Washington DC-based artist originally from Beaver Falls, PA currently in NYC. Working within photography and paper as a medium, Lewis’ current focus has been on creating sculpted paper photo works that combine elements of drawing, sculpture, etching, embroidery and fabric. In these works he sculpts out unseen tensions on bodies and environments, representing them with an array of textures and patterns altering a photograph to be more then a flat plane.. He graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, and has a background in critical care. He has exhibited his work throughout Washington DC, Baltimore, Miami, New York, Houston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles and is currently at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn as an artist in residence.
In this series, I took stills of videos posted on social media of white violence against black bodies. I create emotion through texture and patterns in the figures and sometimes the environments. By changing the images to black and white I aim to connect these current images and patterns of white violence to the past, to highlight how this violence has been a continuing fabric within the United States. In using a scalpel to carve into these stills I seek to deconstruct and investigate them, rendering some of the images altered to the point of being unrecognizable. I invite the viewer to take a closer look, to be drawn in, to reassemble the image and contemplate images that are often fleeting moments.