HANNA LIDEN AND NATE LOWMAN

The philosopher Robert Hullot-Kentor once asked me if I thought I knew what it meant to be a true friend. Such a simple question; such a beautifully complicated philosophical thought. Something about this whole thing crystallizes when you look at other people’s creative meditations on friendship. Currently at Salon 94 in New York, the nearly decade-long friendship of New York artists Hanna Liden and Nate Lowman becomes an entry point into an exhibition of work, “Come As You Are Again,” that illustrates friendship as a continuous, fluid action. As two people who seemed to have been fated for friendship—“Nate and I had good chemistry from the moment we met,” says Liden—the two also seem equally natural co-conspirators. “I see her six days a week—if not seven. We save things for each other and she gives me a lot of my ideas,” says Lowman.

The two have independently produced work defined by an examination of contemporary iconographies that sways into the macabre, and in this show, Lowman’s painted retellings of unlovely landscapes and political and pop-cultural events seem quieter and more individuated in thought. Equally, Liden’s signature Scandinavian landscape photographs—heavy on neo-Pagan feeling—have given way to a series of witty self-portraits of the artist in plastic-bag masks that show her delving into an intriguingly off-kilter aesthetic language. While these works were made independently, a collaborative collage made of receipts is one of the standout works in the show, and illuminates the artistic bond that was the impetus for the exhibition. “We’re so close, and we always know exactly what’s going on with each other, so the show kind of developed from that,” says Liden. “As an artist, the line between your job and your other life is very blurred, so it’s really natural for us to talk about our ideas and what we are making. We do that all the time anyway.” Lowman concurs: “Making art is such a weird thing to do. It’s just easier to talk to other people who are doing it; the conversations are easier.”

And often for the two, those same conversations form the starting point for new works. This show features a painting Lowman made of the infamous Abu Ghraib image of prisoners being forced to lie on top of one another. “I had made a painting of Lynndie England, the soldier [at Abu Ghraib], and I had wanted to do something else on those images for years. But sometimes you need an accumulation of reasons to get into something,” says Lowman. “I had been thinking about piles, and then I saw Hanna’s piece with the pyramid of rats. So I thought I’d pair that with a pyramid of people.” And as far as the Ayn Randian notions of success that have sometimes made the art world a less-than-hospitable place for shared inspiration, Lowman and Liden seem to rise above the fray and emulate a model of collaboration that never devolves into one-upmanship. “I don’t know if it was because the art market was really strong when we all started, but my friendships [with artists] are really constant and not competitive,” says Lowman. “They’re really straightforward. That’s what collaboration is [for me]. It’s friendship.”

“Come As You Are Again” is on view at Salon 94, New York, through January 12

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