Mark Lombardi

Damn The Aesthetic for not having direct links to posts. I was cruising the internet at lunch today, visited The Aesthetic, and lo and behold, I’m reminded about an artist who’s work has obsessed me for so long that it’s had slipped from obsession to memory. I’m going to just reprint the whole post here for your linking pleasure, since the links are what it’s all about on this one. Thanks to Garrison for the jolt!

It’s possible that no artist has ever merged art and politics as well as Mark Lombardi. The artist died in 2000, but his work lives on as living testimony that conspiracy can be quite elegant if rendered properly. We originally learned of him in a Punk Planet article reprinted in the Utne Reader. While it’s hard to truly get an idea of his art from images on the web, you can see a little bit of what he was up to here and here. You can also see more on Google. (April 10, 2007)

I encountered Lombardi’s work a few years ago during a visit to the YBCA in San Francisco. I had gone up to take a peek at Bang the Machine, their video game oriented show (which was a bit of a muddle, but had some solid work in it, along with some total crap.) , and I discovered his work in the upstairs hallways. Mark Lombardi’s work is to me, like an album so good you want to cover the whole thing, anyone who’s ever been in a band knows that feeling. You wish you had done it yourself - you know that it’s the work that some tiny part of you inside could do, and you’ll forever reference and to some degree emulate it. I think it was my encounter with Lombardi’s work that made me know (not just realize) that diagrams can be art, and I owe him a big debt. I don’t think I would have been able to do of my Avian Flu work had I not seen his show.