Lighting in General: Tom Lloyd's Electronic Refractions

Document Type

Article

Authors

Blake Oetting, New York UniversityFollow

Author Biography

Blake Oetting is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. His previous and forthcoming writing can be found in Art Journal, Nka, Artforum, Texte Zur Kunst, November, Flash Art, and BOMB, among others. He is currently a Helena Rubinstein Fellow in critical studies in the Whitney Independent Study Program.

Abstract

This paper describes Tom Lloyd’s light sculptures, specifically those shown in his 1968 exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem, Electronic Refractions II, in relation to the Black Arts Movement and minimalist phenomenology. Even while his work’s industrial-style light fixtures and geometric metal structures bear a resemblance to minimal sculpture, they act as foils to the likes of Dan Flavin and his peers’ habitual references to gallery interiors. Moving beyond the white cube, his work harnesses the disorienting effects of lights on the city street. Approaching Lloyd’s relationship to and extension of the phenomenological thrust of artwork in the minimalist field, this essay describes an extra-aesthetic emphasis in Lloyd’s work that rhymes with the artist’s activism as part of the Black Arts Movement and as executive director of the Store Front Museum / Paul Robeson Theater in Jamaica, New York. By proposing a through line between his sculpture, activism, and work with the Black Arts Movement—rather than describe these as contradictory aspects of the artist’s life—it is argued here that the artist offered an innovative translation of Black radical politics into a nonobjective format.

Recommended Citation

Oetting, Blake (2023) "Lighting in General: Tom Lloyd's Electronic Refractions," Criticism: Vol. 65: Iss. 1, Article 1.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism/vol65/iss1/1