Some of us respect what makes people different from one another. By withholding judgment of others, we avoid enveloping them in our own contexts, selfishly assuming their futurities. Yet psychologist Marie-Louise Von Franz asserts, “Wherever known reality stops, where we touch the unknown, there we project an archetypal image.”

“I am no bird…” Installation view. Courtesy of ltd los angeles. Photo: Blake Jacobsen

Try as we might, we cannot help typecasting in impassioned situations, like when we project ourselves onto our loved ones. In these instances, an inversion happens—and darkness falls: assuming he or she is always on your side, always on the same page, without flaws, or with too many flaws to count, we often deny what makes our lover(s) distinct from us. By attributing ourselves to them as an over-fixation, we deny our own existences as well.

Sarah Faux, Just like that (good girl), 2017. Courtesy of the artist and ltd los angeles. Photo: Blake Jacobsen

“I am no bird…,” the current group exhibition at ltd los angeles, highlights the discomfort of identity straying too far from itself, lensed through another—like straying paint strokes, out of bounds on Sarah Faux’s Just like that (good girl) (2017). The viewers’ expectations of body imaging and imagery is toyed with throughout: Chloe Seibert outlines the shape of a woman’s breasts with vinyl, steel, rubber, zip-ties on her Untitled screen (2016), as an unforeseeable (yet forgettable) scribble. Christina Quarles’ slick acrylic on canvas, And When the Clouds Clear, We Will Know the Color of the Sky (2016), depicts a flaccid woman “starfishing,” but not as a lingerie garnering femme fatale, sexually defined to be iTouched, but as a splayed fluid body, stressed by the specific gravity of the piece, like a floating wet noodle.

Christina Quarles, And When the Clouds Clear, We Will Know the Color of the Sky (2016). Courtesy of the artist and ltd los angeles. Photo: Blake Jacobsen

Is life—which is far too short—a self-guided misdirection toward an uncertain yet formal articulation of love? To be embraced by another who sees or does not see what we see in ourselves, atomizing, even making obsolete our own interiorities, is the ceaseless human struggle this exhibition brings to light.

“I am no bird…” January 13 – February 10, 2018, at ltd los angeles, 1119 South La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90019. ltdlosangeles.com