(2003-12-09) Mark Lombadi Reviews

Michael Bierut on current Mark Lombardi exhibit in NYC.

Links to Ny Times review - Lombardi's art, while scrupulous and eye-opening, is not really about specifics, although it can first appear to be because his drawings look so meticulously made. When you look more closely you realize that the charts are hard to decipher and short on details. This is a failing only for those people who mistakenly expect Lombardi to be an investigative reporter, not an artist.... The relevance of the art, especially since 9/11, obviously stems from a general sense that the world has come to seem more unsafe, with criminal networks operating in the shadows and often in cahoots with the Powers That Be. Lombardi's art anticipated this state of psychological discontent and paranoia. Its lack of specifics, the purposeful consequence of condensing vast information, can be seen as a Metaphor for the elusiveness of truth that was Lombardi's real subject... It is as if these charts could be indefinitely expanded until every one of them were connected and perhaps, in the end, every one of us fitted into them: a network of ties reaching toward infinity, bringing the whole world together in an immense web. (Intertwingularity)