text by Barbara Norton
Love is magic and magic is love in Lydia Maria Pfeffer’s newest exhibit at Galerie Droste. Pfeffer gleefully dances across the teeming, queer forest floor in Love Magic, on view through August 12 in Paris. Unabashedly beastly, Pfeffer’s creatures have uncovered the secret to that jeweled, wisteria world of queer perfection. And they aren’t reluctant to let the rest of us know—serene, self-satisfied smiles grace the face of nearly every face (human or not). In this world, the joy is so open that it is difficult to look away.
These creatures’ utter comfort with both themselves and each other is especially magical in Heavenly Visit, as a leopard with a near-human visage nuzzles against a beaked woman’s lap. With its eyes closed and mouth open in bliss, one can’t help but feel almost jealous of that leopard and its pink-tinted nirvana.
A visual gorging, lilacs, apples, and moons pirouette around amongst feathered, furred, and finned revelry. Pfeffer’s use of color only furthers her fantastic agenda of complete release—pale blues wrap amorously around golds and ruby reds. The rainbow of greens in Dream in Green is especially erotic in its lushness. Starburst-like white flowers—woven into the mane of the center wolf woman—bloom from soft brushstrokes that glow with vitality.
Meanwhile in Sweet Love, a fox wraps an arm around the waist of a heavenly messenger, as lily of the valley blooms and a swan looks on. Joy shines in these small details, suggesting that these scenes exist in an entirely formed world, perhaps only a few galaxies away from our own. In Pfeffer’s twilight boudoir, erotic, unhinged queer love is the shimmering core—true love magic.
Love Magic is on view through 12 August at Galerie Droste Rue des Archives 72.
