THE GLOBAL CARNIVAL, 2026

Curated by Jeffrey Uslip

Carl Kostyál, London

March 2026

The Global Carnival : Julian Lombardi

Julian Lombardi situates biomorphism in purgatory; His paintings are staged within the present's psychic break, wagering abstraction’s potential to provide clarity. Picture planes act as porous thresholds, daring viewers to enter deeply personal, charged worlds. Consciousness itself is a landscape: atmospheric forms erupt into being and recombine across hyper saturated fields of color that manifest rapturous skies, dream-like architectures, and shifting, otherworldly terrains. Protean forms do not resolve into stable symbols, instead, they relentlessly morph between the subconscious and the social, suggesting that our interior lives are inseparable from waking realities: abstraction in the present tense.

The Global Carnival offers the collective imaginary the possibility for expanded awareness through critical introspection. Lombardi’s paintings presents the strange intimacy tethering us to each others emotions and anxieties. His carnival is not merely a depiction of a fraying world, but a reflection of the instability of a time: hierarchies invert, registers collapse, identities wobble, and life's seemingly concrete, reliable structures appear provisional. Paintings such as “Collection of Souls,” “Memetic Monsters,” “Unsafe Space,” and “Beggar King” depict the untenable relationship between power structures and elemental forces. Atmosphere is stretched by conflict and anxiety, careening into philosophical doubt.

Julian Lombardi’s picture planes are sensuous and alive, anchored in today’s psychosocial realities. The exhibition proposes that renewed consciousness might be born from instability, and painting—tactile, materially grounded—might serve as a counterweight to our decompensated condition. In the midst of The Global Carnival’s fear, anticipation, and sensory overload, Lombardi advocates for renewal, not as an abstract ideal, but an emergent condition struggling toward form.

Jeffrey Uslip, Curator of the American Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale, 2026

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JULIAN LOMBARDI