As a self-described formalist, David Lloyd has spent decades wrestling with painting and its memetic consequences. He has made narrative and abstract work, expanded chromatic boundaries, and incorporated sculptural concerns by moving away from traditional supports such as canvas and linen in favor of expanding urethane foam, felt, and Astroturf, among other unconventional materials. However, for In The Beginning, Lloyd has ventured into an entirely different class of material. Every piece is a product, in part, of generative AI. The work is steeped in artifice –- a collage of illusionary depths and non-euclidian forms, thinly wrapped in what is AI’s most recognizable aesthetic contribution to the body of work at hand: a thick satin coat that shines like the glossiest finish of a souped-up lowrider. Lloyd does something very different here than faithfully commit the regurgitations of a lunatic algorithm to three dimensional space. He wrenches into physical reality what could otherwise only exist digitally. He embraces the inherently alienating quality of AI generated images, yet armed with the experience of his craft and human honesty, he renders them into something that is recognizably another step forward in painting- a medium that despite its 5000 year lineage, our species remains so enamored with.