A. Moret reviews David Lloyd’s Two Electric Desires for art ltd. magazine 7.16.13

David Lloyd’s mixed-media compositions from his second solo exhibition “Two Electric Desires” at gallery km resist a singular focal point. Like a fractured pane of glass that reveals multiple perspectives in each shard, Lloyd implements a cinematic technique in each shape demarcated by bold brush strokes and vivid colors inspired by an Art Deco palette. The unusual shapes of the surfaces are reminiscent of an icon or mask worn in tribal cultures and in their re-appropriation, become icons of contemporary culture. The form of the work titled Two Electric Desires (2013) is inspired by the physiognomy of the face. In place of the eyes are mirrored images of an obscured figure, swaying, as if caught in the middle of a dance. A suggestion of a nose is marked by two inverted triangles and prose occupies the lower portion symbolizing the mouth. The verse is meant to speak; it begins with “The super intelligence sits in its own space-time,” and concludes “inward and expanding outward, its potential both violent and benign.” The exhibition considers this duality between the “violent and benign,” the metaphysical and the philosophical, and familiar and unfamiliar.

Eternal Return (2012) is neither a true hexagon nor diamond shape, but feels like a series of triangles that have been mended together by paint. On either side of the panel, rendered in a faded bubble gum pink and orange paint, the artist writes “oblivious to the forces around them, the ground opens up and swallows them whole.” Who is oblivious and what are these ominous forces? The opposite panels reads “the objects rotate slowly in a symmetrical dance of covalence.” Are these “objects” the spider web at the top of the panel, or the blurry photograph of a man turned on his side with a black oxygen mask hovering over his mouth? The work offers a high degree of uncertainty–the spider is too small to be identified as immediately dangerous, and the black oxygen mask also looks like a camera held vertically and pointed straight ahead. The word “covalence” is barely legible as Lloyd has run out of space and can barely fit the remaining letters in the corner. Defined as the number of electron pairs an atom can share with other atoms, it becomes a visual representation of the very word it defines. An exhibition of frames within frames and free-floating text that is both poetic and surreal, we can’t help but wonder what the two electric desires truly are.

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