dialogue
Julian Lombardi | Artist
December 2025
6 min read
Painting is a lifelong necessity for Julian Lombardi rather than a discovered practice. Rooted in his earliest memories, it became essential during adolescence as a way to navigate a world where time accelerates, boundaries blur, and the visible intertwines with the unseen. Julian approaches painting as a means of documenting these conditions, attending to the psychic “unknowns” that shape contemporary experience.
His process balances control and intuition, treating creation as a form of surrender. By trusting intuition, Julian allows distortion in form and thought to emerge, using painting to access what resists language. This exchange with the unknowable functions as an ongoing meditation, revealing moments where perception and belief quietly fracture.
Scale acts as an experiential field within this exploration. Monumental works engulf the viewer, while smaller pieces operate as condensed sites of inquiry. Julian rigorously edits his exhibitions, often destroying works that fail to sustain the conceptual dialogue. Across painting and sculpture, his ongoing project, ‘The Global Carnival’, traces the instability of the post-digital age, where form remains unsettled and meaning continually shifts.
Julian Lombardi. Photo by Brynley Odu Davies. Photo courtesy of Kearsey & Gold.
Could you tell us about your early connection to painting, when did it first become a serious pursuit for you?
”Painting has always been a part of me. Even my earliest memories smell of paint. During my teenage years , I needed painting badly, I am very thankful to have found it. I have strong beliefs about the importance of painting and its histories. Today we need painting as a way to document and make sense of the accelerating tempo of contemporary existence - a world where time compresses, boundaries blur, and my own experience feels entangled with both the visible and invisible. My practice is driven by a fascination with what rushes past us unexamined, the “unknowns” that shape our psychic realities.”
Julian Lombardi, Algorithmic Hunger, Oil on canvas, 136 x 204 cm, 2025.
How do you balance control and intuition while working?
“Painting is like life. Creation is life. Being a creative inside of creation is a constant balance between control and intuition. The more I can control myself to trust my intuition the more honestly I create. Painting lets me tap into what is unspoken and unseen, mapping the unpredictable ruptures that erupt when I surrender to distortion, both in form and thought. There is something very cryptic and unknowable about intuition, this phenomenon of having a conversation with guidance beyond our reality is my eternal meditation.”
Julian Lombardi, Synapleash, Oil on canvas, 145 x 97 cm, 2025. Photo courtesy of the artist and L.U.P.O Gallery.
How important is scale to you, do the dimensions of a work alter its meaning or energy?
”The work is made to transport the viewer, including myself. To where that place or state is will always be a very personal experience. Scale serves as a kind of field for quantum phenomena and psychological distortion. Large canvases amplify the sensation of being engulfed by multiple timelines, while smaller works can act as microcosms. Each format has its purpose and allow me to stage my negotiation with the unknown in pursuit of digging up something I’ve never seen before. When I decide how big a work is going to be, my first thought is always how much am I willing to dig?”
Julian Lombardi’s studio. Photo courtesy of Kearsey & Gold.
Your work explores “the technologies of the post-digital age” How do you interpret that term personally?
“I see the post-digital age evolving and collapsing around me - this age amplifies speed, distortion, mass psychosis and a return to otherworldly contact. In a time like now we must go inward and discover why we need to exist as individuals and as a species. My paintings and sculptures are a ledger of this journey into the unknown. My work documents these leaps and gaps - the flickering moments where belief, perception, and creation collide, evoking a world where form is never settled but continually in flux, open to mysteries and revelation.“
Julian Lombardi, The Orchestra, Oil on canvas, 120 x 180 cm, 2025.
How do you choose which works belong together in a show?
“I destroy many works while working through the concepts of my exhibitions - there are very rarely extra works. I know exactly which works I want to show and which ones I don’t. If they don’t achieve the conceptual conversation I am building, I get the blade. The current concept is this idea I’ve been wrestling with for a few years called The Global Carnival.“
Installation view: Julian Lombardi, ‘Unstable Grounds’, Kearsey & Gold, London, 2025.
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