Selected Works — David Leal

Other Projects

https://spndrft.systems/

https://www.artsect.xyz/spindrift

exclamatory, 2021

Digital print on paper,
candles, chainsaw chains,
slides, toilet fresheners,
silicone sex torso, acrylic, mirrored chest of drawers
ipad, eye examinations

Installation: Dimensions variable

Press release

FILTERS (or, Sigils, Ichthus, and their liminal smoke), 2021
Film, 17m
16mm and digital

A ﬁlm about ﬁlters. In the literal way, referring to cigarette ﬁlters and their packaging, and in the metaphorical way, addressing individual’s subjectivities and filtered truths. With this in mind, the ﬁlm leads us into a hypnotic experience that takes our senses to the position of subjects, part of the cast, dancing in slow motion, a waltz with these signs.

Perpetual Explosion, 2020
Video, 4m

Perpetual Explosion observes the actions involved with closing a shift at working in a petrol station and offers a new and final act that threatens the understanding of the event -- the act leads us to reflect on economies of value.
What would happen if the chain is broken? Is the small act of rupturing everyday ritual(s) of consumption/production in itself an act of exorcism, insurgence?

Rest Oration (El Greco), 2020
Video, 8m

Rest Oration (El Greco) imagines a fictitious restoration of a painting while giving it a life of its own. Produced during the pandemic period, while museums are closed to the public, the film suggests a time for broader restoration.

Part of the project Speaking in Tongues 2020, a performance-based project devised by Fine Art students of Central Saint Martins developed in a partnership with The National Gallery, London’s Learning & National Programmes.

You are a letter, written not with ink, but with the Spirit, 2019
Film, 4m

Michelle, a trans woman who started transitioning later in her life, finds in faith the strength to welcome her true self.

A Spinal cord as a Whip, 2019
Synthetic hair on leather whip
25cm x 200cm x 10cm

Preyer, 2019
Fisting dildo and eye examination slides on a light pad
80 x 50 x 40cm

An urge to cross two symbols — the interior of vision(s) and its nerves, and the praying hand of fetish — and laying them in the same examination layer. The light pad gives life to the images taken through the holes in the eyes, when pupils are stretched. The light pad also gives the illusion that the hole-stretching hands are levitating from the brightness.

At being positioned on the floor, where the sex toy would probably be, I call the viewers to put their faces closer to the floor and their eyes down, in a similar position to praying, or playing… To examine ideas of stretch.

Shown at the Central Saint Martins’ Open studio event (2019)

Choir (2018)
Posters
Dimensions variable
Shown at Sound Event, Central Saint Martins, 2019

Lens, Chalice, Censer, 2018
Installation, Dimensions variable.
Contact lenses, needles, eye examinations and candles on acrylic display supports

Wonky Donky at Camberwell College of Arts (2018)