Interview Magazine Interviews Nate Lowman

Interview magazine (of which Mary-Kate Olsen is rumored to be the March 2009 cover girl) recently interviewed MK’s boyfriend, New York-based artist, Nate Lowman. They chat about Nate’s evolution as an artist, his childhood, his current projects and more.

Nate is 30 years old and grew up in Idyllwild, California. His father ran a non-profit art school there, which acted as his introduction to the art world, albeit tangentially.

He sees himself as sort of a “remixer”, that is, taking already existing pieces and turning them into art.

“A lot of the images I use are already out there in the public or in the news,” he says. “I just steal them or photograph them or repaint them, so they’ve already been talked about, already been consumed. I’m just reopening them to get at their second, third, or fourth meanings.”

For Nate, his art is all about what the pieces express, what they say about our society and how they speak to the person experiencing the piece.

“It really comes down to language. I feel like the biggest failure of humans is miscommunication,” he explains. “We can’t communicate with each other-we can fight, we can kill, we can do those things well. Language is the most beautiful and destructive thing because it allows you to express yourself, but it totally confuses everything.”

Here’s a slideshow featuring two pieces by Nate. (NSFW):

They never once mention Nate’s relationship with Mary-Kate, which I find refreshing and appealing. They want to put the focus on Nate as a young artist in New York and not on Nate, the celebrity boyfriend. It sounds like Nate has a lot of talent and vision, it will be interesting to see what he does next.

Read the profile here. I think this interview provides some wonderful insight to the man in Mary-Kate’s life.

Image: Splash News Online