Nate Lewis’s Dancing Figures Awaken a Sense of Healing

Here, we ask an artist to frame the essential details behind one of their latest works.

Bio: Nate Lewis, 37, Harlem (@nloois)

Title of work: tuning the calibration of his weather (2022).

Where to see it: “Tuning the Current” at Fridman Gallery (169 Bowery, New York) until Oct. 23.

Three words to describe it: Transcendent, meditative, powerful. 

What was on your mind at the time: As soon as I saw this pose from the photoshoot I fell in love with it. I was trying to give the composition what it needed and not what I’ve done with the compositions in the past. I’ve never duplicated an image to make a full composition, but I knew that this was the way to compose this one. One of Derek Fordjour’s works has multiple line majors in a marching band bending all the way backwards in synchronicity. I saw this image often because I lived by the 145 St subway station where his mosaic is with that image. That particular work has been nested in my memory. I felt the bend in those backs. I wasn’t thinking to ever make a piece that reminded me of that piece, but I think it was just sitting, and as soon as I saw this move the dancer did who I was photographing, it reminded me of that particular work of his. 

An interesting feature that’s not immediately noticeable: I incise blue ink into a small amount of the cuts in the areas of each leg. You can only see the blue ink from one side of the piece. Also the cuts in the black area of the legs also read in a lenticular way. They change depending on what side the viewer is looking at the work.  

How it reflects your practice as a whole: There’s this macro, micro, movement relationship thing happening. The lines in the background are made by a print, frottage process, they feel like sound waves, a frequency or wind movement. There’s a movement that happens in the patterns in the legs, and also a more micro pattern movement that is happening in the picked area in the lower left of the piece, that feels cellular, molecular or even feel like the movement of the bird starling murmurations. I’m interested in systems/languages and the relationships between them. From the multi-layer systems in our bodies to the systems of weather and the broader relationships of them to movement and cultural output. This piece encapsulates some of that.

One song that captures its essence: Me in 20 Years by Moses Sumney.