EJ Hill: ‘Low-Slung Promises On the Tongues of the Devout’
52 Walker Gallery, 52 Walker St., New York, New York
Through September 13

The New York art world is no stranger to extreme acts of endurance. In 1972, Vito Acconci hid under a wooden ramp at the Sonnabend gallery for three straight days, rolling about and vocalizing his darkest fantasies. In 1974, Joseph Beuys spent three days with a coyote in a gallery’s display window. 

Tehching Hsieh in 1978 spent the entire year locked in a simulated prison cell in complete isolation. Most recently, Marina Abramovich sat still in a chair for eight hours a day, seven days a week over a period of three months, inviting viewers at the Museum of Modern Art to sit across from her and maintain eye contact. She did so with 15,000 visitors. 

Now a much quieter performance is under way at 52 Walker, a branch of the David Zwirner gallery at Chelsea. A young performance artist from the West Coast, EJ Hill, is now performing “Low-Slung Promises On The Tongues of the Devout,” an endurance piece that requires him to remain perfectly still for eight hours a day while kneeling on a prayer bench, with no allowance for breaks of any kind. That is eight straight hours during which he does not go to the bathroom or eat or drink anything. He retreats to living quarters every evening and returns every morning. 

Happening across Mr. Hill’s remarkable performance, my first thought is that he must be a statue. So perfect and unmoving is his meditative trance I suspect he might be a cheeky and hyperreal creation by Maurizio Catelan. A few moments later, however, there is the detection of the slightest movement, though it is barely enough to remove doubt. A minute later, having gone around to the back of the curtained enclosure to further scrutinize him, I can see him sway, ever so slightly, accompanied by the faintest breathing. The effect is spellbinding and eerie.

Mr. Hill is known for pieces that test physical and mental endurance — he once jumped rope to the point of collapse, re-enacting a difficult time in early adolescence. In this exercise, however, he is unshakeable. Even with my exclamation of surprise, whispered but audible nonetheless, I cause no ripple across his features. He is immersed in a state as mysterious as it is serene. As his gallery text attests: “In this particular moment, when many are experiencing times of unrest and strife, Hill proffers his performance as an act of healing.”

It is not often that one finds artists praying in a contemporary art gallery. With the rich red velvet of the curtains framing him, the padded prayer kneelers before him, and paintings that are composed from leather and vinyl kneeler pads, the effect is markedly ecumenical. Not since Andres Serrano has a contemporary artist engaged so deeply in Catholic iconography, to completely opposite effect. In other parts of the gallery, Mr. Hill’s signature paintings brightly depict clouds and flowers, rendered in the translucent hues of stained-glass windows. He appears to have constructed a strange church of his own.

Mr. Hill, raised at Los Angeles, has long engaged in shinier aspects of contemporary culture, from pop soul divas to roller coasters. He does so, however, with a naïve positivity and optimism that often belies contemporary art’s distinctly nihilistic character. The ecumenical trappings of his current show signals a further shift: Contemporary artists aren’t known for their organized religion (despite the devout Catholicism of Andy Warhol). Nor are they known for willfully undergoing the agonies of the physical to reach the transcendent. You can only imagine Mr. Hill’s poor knees. 

Seen from a religious perspective, however, what Mr. Hill is doing is perennial. Intense acts of devotion involving pain and endurance appear in every religious culture. Witness the pilgrims of Guadalupe making their way to the Virgin’s basilica on their knees, or the pain rituals in Phuket’s Vegetarian festival. As for a spiritual goal, Mr. Hill merely states that he is meditating to examine his own endurance against the promises and trappings of his childhood religion. No further context is given. Even so, his performance is unusually brave.

It is also participatory. Though it is not actively encouraged, there is no rule against kneeling along with Mr. Hill, should you feel so inclined. One gallery goer went so far as to kneel directly next to him for a time, a shared moment of unusual spiritual communion. Mr. Hill will be there until September 13.