In “We All Love Your Life,” the London-based artist George Henry Longly’s first solo exhibition in the United States, space travel is an act of both connection and removal, of being seen and disappearing. “When you think about it, astronauts were the original reality stars,” Longly said in a recent conversation. “Everything they did was observed and documented. We had access to these people in a bubble. When those things arise, there are questions of downtime that are interesting.”Occupying two floors at the Red Bull Studios in New York City, the exhibition is divided into zones, each with a distinct purpose. When you enter the show, you are immediately drawn toward what Longly calls the living space. The walls and floor are painted chroma key blue, as if the room were a movie set for a scene in which special effects will be added later, and safety bars are positioned at odd angles to evoke the way astronauts use all available space due to a lack of gravity. A deconstructed sculpture based on a scan of the British Museum’s statue of Dionysus lounges high up against one of the walls, adding to the disorientating effect of the space, at once calming and exciting. On the ground, a small orb with a webcam inside watches you. You’re resting and being observed, performing even when you’re not working.Longly said the idea for the show grew out of his reading of Henry S.F Cooper’s 1976 book “A House in Space,” about the Skylab space station. Cooper, who passed away in February of this year, was a longtime writer for the New Yorker best known for his reporting on space travel. Longly found the book in a thrift store around 2008 and has used bits and pieces of its text in previous works. “It had a real impact on me,” he explained. “It demystified the process of space travel, but it’s also about power relations, issues of labor, overwork, and downtime.”The rest of the first floor contains mirrors printed with text from the book — including a prose poem authored by Skylab astronauts that they claimed was the first such work written in space — and a kitchen area, which Longly said was meant to be the focal point of human activity within the different zones. “I was thinking of continual distraction, which affects my life and many people I know,” he explained. “One thing I do in the studio is cook, to clear my head.” But at the same time, the layout of the kitchen, adorned with overhead lights and a microphone that make it resemble a studio, blurs the boundaries between work and leisure. Is there off time when you’re constantly being observed and recorded?“I think you can look at this whole show as a metaphor for artistic production,” Longly said. “But I’m using it to represent a contemporary condition that we’re all faced with.” With cell phones, and live streams, and constant surveillance, everything turns into a performance. “That’s what we do now. People put on live sex shows for free with their partners, and anyone can tune in. Literally, total exposure.”Downstairs, the exhibition features what Longly calls the performance space. A giant screen plays a 12-minute video of snakes crawling around Longly’s studio. Music, created by the musician David Maclean, pulses around the room, a stuttering shuffle of chords with little rhythmic backbone. It slows time down, draws you in. As the video ends, the focus shifts to a mysterious costume, designed by James Long, that hangs on a mannequin on the other side of the space and is spotlighted as chopped-up pop music plays.This area is the most important, celebrating the performative aspects of contemporary life. It complicates the other zones’ critique of our mediated existence, provoking contemplation through sensory overload. Space, Longly explained, “is a place where these existential questions can happen — far enough away from earth but spinning, orbiting the earth several times a day.”
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