Mark Lombardi: Global Networks

Focusing on a body of twenty-four of the artist's complex and diagrammatic Narrative Structures drawings from 1994–2000, The Drawing Center presented the first retrospective of the late Mark Lombardi (1951–2000), affirming the significance of his work in light of the economic and political developments at the time and in relation to new directions in drawing. Lombardi's seminal Narrative Structures series of drawings represented a reinvention of the genre of history painting for the twenty-first century and a reinvigoration of conceptual drawing for a new global-political context.

Through drawing, Lombardi mapped connections of complicity that traced the flow of capital, the peddling of influence, and the construction of invisible power structures. Lombardi said of his Narrative Structures drawings, "each consists of a network of lines and notations which are meant to convey a story." The protagonists of these stories included: Charles Keating, BCCI, the Vatican Bank, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Osama Bin Laden, and hundreds of implicated parties. Relying on reports in newspapers, television, and other sources in the public domain, Lombardi compiled immense amounts of data on a vast and largely ignored commerce of apparent collusion among government officials, intelligence operatives, business leaders, organized crime, and financial institutions. The artist then visually charted his documentary evidence through elegant arrangements of dashes, dots, text, long arching lines, and clusters of circles drawn in pen and graphite.