NON-PLACES
In his travels before and especially after the pandemic, Roberto Lombana have had this feeling related to non-places. A term coined by Mark Augé that refers to those transit spaces we encounter and don’t give too much attention to as we move from one place to another.
One of those spaces that catch Robert´s attention was the subway and subway stations. Its functional and durable design aesthetic responds to each particular city and culture that communicates the values of a society
in its historical moment.
For instance, if we compare a subway car in London or Tokyo, Medellin or
Paris, we can appreciate four different visions and esthetic expressions that
correspond to these parts of the world.
Back to his original feeling, you might ask, but why does he paints these
subway cars without people? Lombana continued taking photos to do his
paintings, as he continued traveling, he wondered what would happen to these spaces if there was a natural disaster, a nuclear event like Fukuyama or the world heats up a few degrees. People would not continue to come here to transit from one place to another. These non-spaces would remain empty. Roberto´s premonition came true shortly after that. When humanity suffered the pandemic, these spaces became empty.
This work reminds us that as we move from one place to another, there is a space that no one owns, and others are in charge of designing and up-keeping. Invaluable to human existence as it serves the purpose of connecting us all.
This series of paintings are the result of a spatial and perceptual experience mediated by photography, converted to mixed media canvas in a homage to Richard Estes that translates photography into a painting