Federico Lombardo

"Man is least himself when he talks in the first person. Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth”

Oscar Wilde.

"If not the same drawer, the drawing is to be blind." This paradoxical issue, not to say provocative, was launched by the philosopher Jacques Derrida in the Nineties. It is not to treat directly the drawer and visual artist as a blind man, but to reflect on what could bring the drawer to interest to the sight, and this goes without saying, but also to the hands.

By focusing on the eye and hand, then the gesture, the designer is already in the situation of specular reflection. He takes himself as a possible blind, someone walking with his hand, if you can say so, who works with the hand. This interest of the drawer for the look, leads to the question of the portrait, in which the artist is looking for to be surprised when he draws, paints, photographs himself or a possible model.

The direction of the look, the position of the face, however, give us some clues that suggest the presence of the mirror. In the portrait, and even more in the 'self-portrait, the visual artist gives the viewer the place of the mirror. He blinds himself, he masks the mirror giving himself to the look of the other and installing the other to the mirror's place.

Although following a model, during the process of creation, the artist moves in to the dark because the artistic production advances through the invisibility. On the other hand, the stroke is itself invisible. The stroke is what separates, chooses; it is the interval and, as such, is not visible. The experience of creation is the proof, par excellence, of that invisibility in the same way in which the drawer and visual artist in general, is frequently presented as the one who sees.

According to this premise, we understand what and how Federico Lombardo and Massimiliano Mirabella depict themselves or others. Federico Lombardo chooses the subject of his portraits basically according to his sensitivity, through a careful research of an idea of beauty that is absolute and transcendent, coming to an obsessive suspension of the characters it portrays: divine creatures positioned at the edge of a dimension that the viewer does not perceive immediately.

The look of his characters punches a 'hole' in the viewer's perception breaking the mirror of Derrida. The choice of the half-length stems from Roman sculpture, the dark background behind these suspended creatures, refers to the Italian Quattrocento and soft lighting, to Rembrandt. It is the support, however, that breaks with tradition.

Federico Lombardo calls into question an entire system, because although it works with his own hand, walking with his hand, to resume precisely Derrida, he painted not on canvas but on a tablet through a computer screen, using color and digital brushes, printing then the image as if it was a photograph. It is not so impossible that one day his portraits remain suspended within an ultra-flat screen.

What is finally the relationship between the human and the digital in Federico Lombardo? The connection between these two dimensions is in the drawing. He does not abandon the drawing, as even the perception of color. In the portraits of Federico Lombardo human images flow imperceptibly into the imitations of human beings: among the many androgynous figures, we could, of course, reveal an android self-portrait.