One of Nate Lewis’s works on display at Morton Fine Art. (Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art)The photographs of nude African American bodies employed by Nate Lewis aren’t exactly blank slates. The local artist leaves some bodily details — eyes, fingers, nipples — in the pictures he transforms for “Hidden Tensions,” at Morton Fine Art. But Lewis complements the intact bits of flesh with intricate markings, cut into the black-and-white pictures and or added with white ink. The symbols suggest fabric motifs and ritual body paint, but the artist calls them “unseen tensions of the past, present and future.”
The patterns are both additions and deletions, as emphasized by one of the show’s most recent pieces. In “Palpable Memories II,” a ghostly figure is carved into a D.C. street shot from 2016’s Inauguration Day. Where the single-figure pictures are highlighted by white backdrops, this scene is crowded with people from across the political spectrum. And thus, of course, not-so-hidden tensions.
Hidden Tensions: Nate Lewis Through April 11 at Morton Fine Art, 1781 Florida Ave. NW. 202-628-2787. mortonfineart.com.
Morton Fine Art: curator's notes 