Michele Lombardelli’s work is characterized by uncomfortably tight space with little opportunity for physical or psychological escape.

In Untitled (landscape), 2010 an underexposed black and white photograph of a mountain landscape acts as the background for a long-focused spot of white spray-paint. This small painterly gesture leaves the effect of a portal to the unknown burned through the image’s horizon. In Untitled, 2010 the artist repeats this gesture, except this time the photograph is an extreme close up of black and white specked tile floor and a larger spray of black paint becomes a violent and dark stained secret. His painterly marks elicit cramped channels into a claustrophobic void, unlike the atmospheric voids typical of expressionism. On small picture planes, Lombardelli keeps the viewer trapped in tight spaces with no light at the end of the tunnel. The viewer is reminded that death is inescapable and for this artist there is no afterlife.

In the collage, Untitled Project, 2009 a photograph, perhaps of another mountain landscape, has been completely masked in black and white oil paint abstracting the image only to its light and shadow, mostly shadow. In another collage of the same title a cutout black blob shape floats on top of a white netting with holes painted out in black, this in turn sits on top of a black and white speckled image reminiscent of the previously referred-to floor tile. It is as if the web of time is being pulled into a black hole, the most cramped and crushing physical space imaginable.

With Untitled (moquette), 2009 the work slides down the wall and slumps to the floor like a dead body. The black ink-jet print on white carpet leaves the circular pattern of a bullet fracturing a windshield. The entry point becomes a rabbit hole that only leads down.

In perhaps his most telling gesture, Lombardelli unites the concept of inescapable physical space with that of the psychological in Untitled (Charles Manson), 2009, a messy black and white diagonal grid with leaky black paint and a somber and ominous figurative silhouette. Here, we see an inescapably dark collective memory linked with a psychological read—the Ego and Super Ego incapable of masking the Id.

Michele Lombardelli was born in Cremona, Italy in 1968. He currently lives and works in Cremona and Los Angeles, CA. Recent exhibitions include Giunge una vocde a qualcuno nel buio, AMT | Torri&Geminian, Milan, Italy; Estremi del libro d’artista, curated by Giorgio Maffei, Cripta747 gallery, Torino, Italy; A Story About the Old About Nothing About This or That, curated by Alfredo Sigolo, Bonelli Contemporary, Los Angeles; The Triumphant ID, BCA Gallery, Mumbai, India.