Kevin Cooley: A Thousand Miles an Hour, Ryan Lee Gallery, New York

Throughout his practice, Los Angeles-based artist Kevin Cooley considers our evolving relationship with technology, nature, and ultimately each other. The underlying conceptual framework of his work is how these forces contend with each other and how we exist among them. His art is currently on display at Ryan Lee Gallery, New York, until 21 February.

Cooley’s newest work, A Thousand Miles an Hour (2014), observes the diurnal motion of the sun, moon, and stars that we experience as humans; with its referring to the speed at which the Earth rotates around its axis. Cooley is interested in our perception and experience as it relates to scientific fact, exploring the particular disconnect between what we see and know.

Through slow-moving, continuous tracking shots, the emergence and descent of the sun and moon, presented as stationary objects, are recorded. The video captures the slowly changing colours of the sky, the fast moving clouds, and the shifting horizons of the landscape. Cooley recreates day and night during the middle of lunation when the sun, moon, and earth are directly lined up with one another and when the rising and setting of the sun and moon are at polar opposites. Each channel appears on parallel walls in the project space, one bearing the moon and the other the sun. As the two celestial bodies rise and set respectively then change screens, the viewer stands in place of the earth.

A companion project, Illuminated Crescent PSE 10-23-2014, is on view in RLWindow in conjunction with the show.

Kevin Cooley: A Thousand Miles an Hour, 15 January – 21 February, Ryan Lee Gallery, 515 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001.

Credits
1. Kevin Cooley, A Thousand Miles an Hour, 2014, Two-channel HD Video, 24 mins.