Never Remember—the exhibition title a biting reversal of the slogan “Never forget”—takes place in the very gallery where Jasper Johns’s map paintings were shown thirty years before. Lowman’s Maps expand on his own shaped canvases begun in the early 2000s, depicting doodled hearts, trompe l’oeil decals of bullet holes, and air freshener trees.
Lowman’s Maps infuse the geometries of the United States with a gritty, gestural tactility, combining chance and intention in the generative possibilities of a single form. With sharp political skepticism, Lowman employs abstraction to point to the arbitrariness of borders and the limitations of jingoism, thus expounding on the complexities and contradictions of the American way. Never Remember is on view through December 15 at Gagosian 980 Madison Avenue, New York. photographs courtesy Gagosian