Spencer Longo at TORUS

Spencer Longo, Experience the Spirit (installation view) (2024). Ink on paper, 24 x 33.25 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and TORUS, Los Angeles. Photo: Ruben Diaz.

In the exhibition Internal Empire at TORUS, artist Spencer Longo creates a web of extremist ideologies culled from a collection of late 20th-century American fringe publications. Lined across the gallery, ten works on paper feature text and images sourced from zines, fliers, and pamphlets published by groups as varied as ecoterrorists, military fanatics, and animal rights activists. Longo digitally layers these motifs and prints them using a computerized plotter machine, creating a melange of symbolic meaning that conjures the kind of apocalyptic unrest anticipated by cult leaders. The experience of viewing these works is akin to taking a Rorschach inkblot test, in which images and shapes connect to complex codes of meaning unbeknownst to the test subject. Longo’s dense layering of the symbols used by fringe groups in the United States makes trying to decode their already secret languages all the more difficult, pointing toward the permeating sense of divisiveness influencing the American psyche.

Longo maintains a trichromatic palette of red, blue, and black throughout the works, eliciting nationalist fervor and unsettling alienation. In Experience the Spirit (2024), the work’s title stretches across a blue backdrop of pixelated clouds from which a bald eagle, a symbol of U.S. pride and sovereignty, emerges. Beside it, several pairs of hands reach through the bars of a fence, prompting questions about who these hands belong to and why they are barred from experiencing the “spirit” referenced in the work. The scene calls forward familiar images of immigrants seeking refuge at the Southern border and of the countless people incarcerated by a dysfunctional prison system. The fence is a boundary for the marginalized, marking the divide between those living in captivity and those free to take flight. 

Though the rise of extremist beliefs in the U.S. is often attributed to social networks, Longo reminds us of their circulation long before the existence of Reddit and YouTube. The Deadly Americans (2023), for example, explores themes related to animal rights reminiscent of those found in Underground, a magazine published by the North American Liberation Front Supporters Group from 1994 to 2002 that encouraged readers to engage in direct action. Another work, Green Peace (2023), features the environmental organization’s emblem layered with a floating dolphin, a uniformed soldier bearing an American flag, and a repeating pattern of cartoonish aliens. The eclectic imagery mimics the digital landscape of online forums, known for their abundance of conspiracy theories and radical politics.

In Vigilante (2023), layers of ink blend together, blurring the boundaries around what seems to be a red-colored snake encircling a tree trunk in the background. This work features the logo of the ’70s publication Vigilante: The Magazine of Personal Security, which depicts an eagle grasping a hangman’s noose that surrounds the scales of justice. Longo intertwines the logo with assorted images, including a subscription stamp, a sunburst illustration, and a nude man curled in a fetal position within a box. For those in the know, who nevertheless operate from the periphery of dominant culture, these images convey a sense of collectivity.  But for those on the outside looking in, Longo’s work speaks to a highly polarized political climate where dangerous fringe beliefs infiltrate online and IRL. The exhibition’s title—Internal Empire—aptly describes this experience of being subsumed into an inner world driven by fear and the desperate need to shield oneself from chaos, whoever the enemy might be.

Spencer Longo: Internal Empire runs from April 21–June 9, 2024 at TORUS (5513 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90019). 

Spencer Longo, Internal Empire (installation view) (2024). Image courtesy of the artist and TORUS, Los Angeles. Photo: Ruben Diaz.

Spencer Longo, Internal Empire (installation view) (2024). Image courtesy of the artist and TORUS, Los Angeles. Photo: Ruben Diaz.

Spencer Longo, Internal Empire (installation view) (2024). Image courtesy of the artist and TORUS, Los Angeles. Photo: Ruben Diaz.

Spencer Longo, Internal Empire (installation view) (2024). Image courtesy of the artist and TORUS, Los Angeles. Photo: Ruben Diaz.

Spencer Longo, Green Peace (installation view) (2023). Ink on paper, 22.5 x 30 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and TORUS, Los Angeles. Photo: Ruben Diaz.

Spencer Longo, Vigilante (installation view) (2023). Ink on paper, 22.5 x 30 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and TORUS, Los Angeles. Photo: Ruben Diaz.

Spencer Longo, Crack in the Heartland (installation view) (2023). Ink on paper, 32 x 24 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and TORUS, Los Angeles. Photo: Ruben Diaz.

Nahui Garcia is an art historian and curator currently living in Los Angeles. She is an MA candidate in the Curatorial Practices and the Public Sphere Program at USC Roski School of Art and Design. 

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