Missed connections
Mark Lombardi's "Global Networks" charts the hidden details of scandals.

By Glen Helfand

THERE IS AN art to getting away with white-collar crime, and it usually involves cultivating insider connections, which grow more insidious with each news report. As guilty parties burrow deeper and controversy becomes more complex, the urgency of fact gets mired in labyrinthine stories only investigators can decipher. How many of us still remember the savings and loan debacle of the late '80s? Even Enron seems historical in the busy realm of contemporary scandal.

For a potent visual reminder of such events in all their murky intrigue, one can contemplate the chartlike graphite drawings of Mark Lombardi. "Global Networks," a traveling survey of Lombardi's work that recently opened at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, provides a timely illustration of how unsavory current affairs can form the foundation for compelling contemporary art. The exhibition consists of dozens of large drawings, a series of documents that take their titles from powerful individuals and sinister webs of commerce in operation during specific historic moments: Meyer Lansky's Financial Network, ca. 1960-78; BNL, Reagan, Bush, and Thatcher and the Arming of Iraq, ca. 1983-91; and World Finance Corporation, Miami, 1970-79.

Lombardi's practice involves poring over diverse source materials on financial and political scandals and then diagramming the information; his intricate drawings map links between individuals and organizations. Created with traditional drafting tools – French curves and such – the text-heavy yet graceful, graphite-and-colored-pencil charts sometimes resemble maps of the cosmos. As works of art they pose a challenge. Is the painstakingly researched information – names of political and business leaders, biographical and social notes – precisely factual? Or do Lombardi's drawings contain wholly speculative elements?

Fittingly, the drawings, part of a larger series (also called "Global Networks") made between 1995 and 2000, have struck a nerve in areas beyond the art world: they've drawn widely publicized interest from government agencies. After Sept. 11, 2001, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents paid a visit to a Lombardi show at the Whitney Museum of American Art because one of the pieces drew connections between President George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden. When a Lombardi exhibition opened at New York City's Drawing Center last fall, officials from the Department of Homeland Security showed up – while New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman was viewing it – to study the artist's visualization of facts. These details feed into Lombardi's artistic interest in conspiracy theories.

Biographical information is a significant, if tragic, aspect of Lombardi's mythology. The artist studied history and worked as a reference librarian and researcher in Houston before moving to New York in the mid '90s. Excerpts from a poorly lit videotaped interview with him reveal a dour character whose eyes seemed wearied by all that he'd seen. The YBC exhibition is installed primarily in the second-floor hallway galleries, a site that ironically has frequently served as a venue for outsider artists of various stripes. This transitory space is not an ideal setting, as Lombardi's project builds on its understated dazzle – the pictures are very much about being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data and, ultimately, the breadth of scandal. It's difficult not to relate these facets to the fact that the artist took his own life, by hanging, in 2000.

This information, like Lombardi's research, is difficult to digest. What's indisputable is that the works possess delicacy and intricate compositional balance and that Lombardi fits in a tradition of socially conscious artists. The exhibition catalog, featuring a lengthy essay by curator Robert Hobbs, compares the pictures to 18th- and 19th-century paintings that document the mythologies of famous battles. Those large oil paintings revel in a kind of vast pageantry echoed by the scale of Lombardi's largest and most impressive drawings, which measure more than 10 feet long. The size is monumental, and the horizontal format suggests old-fashioned panorama paintings, not to mention the aspect ratio of Cinemascope. Lombardi's drawings also nod to the more demure conceptual projects of artists such as Hans Haacke, who in the early 1970s created pieces that systematically revealed, in data form, the real estate holdings of museum trustees. Interestingly, the Lombardi exhibition catalog is as much a lesson in Reagan-era financial, military, and social catastrophes – the S&L scandal, the war on drugs, the Iran-Contra affair, and the origins of the term money laundering – as it is in art history.

There are also similarities between Lombardi's "Global Networks" and recent Internet-based projects such as Friendster, which essentially map out seemingly benign social networks (the log-in page for that site at cursory glance even resembles one of Lombardi's works). As evidenced by its quick rise to cultural-phenomenon status, Friendster taps into a collective desire to feel connected to others – and to see those bonds – in an increasingly disembodied, virtual world. In creating a genealogy for the digital age (a description that's been applied to Lombardi's art), Friendster combats isolation by exploiting the same technology that creates disassociation.

Lombardi's work has a stronger thematic kinship with Josh On's popular 2001 Web project "They Rule" (www.theyrule.net), which generates diagrams of the power relationships that play out on the boards of directors of various large corporations. Like Lombardi, On uses public domain information – the mandated disclosure of who serves on what board – as material. "They Rule" has icons of conference tables and businesspeople, each of whom have links to more than one large corporation. A click on an icon ignites a starburst of lines that reveal corrupting associations. The site also provides direct links to the corporations at hand, thereby allowing interested viewers to see the facts for themselves.

Lombardi's pieces, however, are steeped in analog ethics. They're notably hands-on and labor-intensive. Lombardi favored the anachronistic task of organizing via pencil and paper, and he compiled information on thousands of index cards (a box of them is on display). These days it's more efficient and perhaps relevant to deal with reams of factoids using digital technology, and YBC's pairing of "Global Networks" with an exhibition on computer games is astute. The drawings are comparatively closed systems, personal visions that are fixed. While "They Rule" could easily be expanded and updated, Lombardi's practice requires a fresh drawing to accommodate the uncovering of new information, as is evidenced by a number of works devoted to a single controversy or presidential figure – both Bill Clinton and the elder George Bush are scrutinized many times – each looking at relationships from a different perspective.

Viewers can thoroughly examine "Global Networks" – next to each piece is a diagrammatic key that defines what each dotted or squiggly line means – and thus trace the lines between a bank president and a shah. Or they can simply be overwhelmed by the big picture. (Notably low, reader-unfriendly lighting hints at the latter tendency.) Lombardi's work is tough to penetrate – an apt metaphor for its subject matter. The entry points aren't obvious, the narratives aren't linear, and the artist doesn't point to a specific outcome. That the world is studded with shady dealings and corruption on a global scale is hardly a surprise to anyone these days. Lombardi's specifics may directly appeal to information junkies, but for others, they function as awe-inspiring illustrations of corruption that, unfortunately, seems as eternal as the cosmos.

'Mark Lombardi: Global Networks' is on display through April 4. Tues.-Sun., 11 a.m.-5 p.m (first Thursday of the month, 11 a.m.-8 p.m.), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, S.F. $3-$6 (free first Tuesday of the month), (415) 978-ARTS.