David Lloyd, “In the Beginning”
by David S. Rubin
SPY Projects, Los Angeles, California
Exhibition continued through October 18, 2024
September 21, 2024
David Lloyd, “Alternative Science,” 2024, AI-generated imagery, acrylic and airbrush on wood, 40 x 46”.
All images courtesy of SPY Projects, Los Angeles.
One of the common features of visual images generated by artificial intelligence (AI) is that they tend to appear slightly off, as in an AI-produced portrait where facial features are a bit distorted or proportionally inaccurate. While such glitches may prove frustrating if you are looking for veracity, David Lloyd sees opportunity in the unpredictability of AI’s creations. Known since the 1990s for his playful geometric and biomorphic abstractions, Lloyd has found that AI can boost the eccentricity level of his idiosyncratic visual vocabulary. In what he considers a form of collaboration with his own mind, Lloyd feeds the AI engine photos of his earlier paintings and sculptures and asks the app to replicate them. If he isn’t satisfied with an initial result, he submits photos of additional works and, at times, alters an AI result digitally before resubmitting that as well.
David Lloyd, “Soft Landing,” 2024, AI-generated imagery, acrylic, fabric, and airbrush on wood, 66 x 48”.
Once he signs off on the composition produced by AI, he prints it out and uses it as a template, mounting it on a wood panel. He then applies his time-tested intuition and finely-honed craftsmanship to animate the imagery beyond what AI envisioned — cutting out shapes, hand painting, and applying collage. So, in the partnership between the real and the virtual Lloyd, it is the former who makes the final aesthetic decisions and fashions the physical art object.
David Lloyd, “Device,” 2024, AI-generated imagery, acrylic, fabric, collage and airbrush on wood, 45 x 44”.
Lloyd proudly identifies as a formalist, although his abstract compositions in the past have been linked to such influences as surfing culture and mysticism. Additionally, they have been compared to the abstractions by well-known pioneers of twentieth century abstract painting such as Frank Stella and Elizabeth Murray. Since no data on these influencers was fed into the AI engine, the only major influence in the new body of work appears to be the artist himself. With that in mind, the show’s eleven paintings are consistently effervescent, emboldened by a palette dominated by bright pinks, blues, and yellows. They are further energized by the complex interplay and ambiguities of curvilinear shapes. Frequently stark and surprising juxtapositions play out between flat and volumetric elements. Most often, the latter feature takes the form of a trompe l’oeil shelf or a glossy, protruding finish-fetish structure.
David Lloyd, "The Age of Enlightenment," 2024, AI-generated imagery, encaustic, acrylic, and ink on wood, 35 x 25”.
In the elegant yet whimsical “Alternative Science,” what appears to be a shelf supporting a sleek curvilinear sculpture is composed entirely of paint on flat wood. Lloyd employs both smooth and gestural brushwork to create a convincing illusion. Above this and to the right is a large bulbous shape with a painted light reflection that forcefully projects it into the viewer’s space. Although it reads as an abstraction, it nevertheless resembles a balloon or giant bubblegum bubble.
Several of the paintings are given new life through the intervention of digital technology to the poetics of ambiguity, a key characteristic of the surrealist works of Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte. There is indeed much to discover and enjoy in Lloyd’s latest paintings by getting lost in their details. In viewing “Soft Landing,” my eyes kept veering back to a small white area that rests upon a blue-green ledge underneath another large pink finish-fetish object. While the top of the white shape resembles a tombstone, the grave morphs into a cloth draped over the ledge, with dripped paint simulating shreds in the fabric. Similarly, the imagery in “Device” looks something like a dislodged automobile door with a giant proboscis-shaped cavity at its core from which spills a pearlescent substance suggestive of a runny nose.
David Lloyd, “A Protean World,” 2024, AI-generated imagery, acrylic, oil, collage and fabric on wood, 72 x 53”.
Lloyd also toys with our perception through his process. Although it is difficult to detect, some of the paintings, such as “The Age of Enlightenment,” have been assembled from separate wooden sections, like jigsaw puzzles.
Despite all those naysayers who are skeptical of AI and think that it will lead to the obsolescence of human creativity, Lloyd deftly proves that it can be a useful tool for artists in the same way that Xerox machines, Photoshop, and other technological devices have become consequential facilitators of fresh creative statements. In this exhibition, at least, the ultimate results are still very much in the hands of the artist.
