From the 17th of January until the 11th of April 2026, the exhibition When Everything Slows Down was presented at 1215 Gallery, Quebec. This exhibition contained a collection of artworks in varied media, centered around the theme of slowed perception – taking moments to shift one’s attention inwards, pause, and allow subtlety to come to the forefront of experience.
“Y3” by Quishan Li acts as both a juxtaposition to the exhibition theme and a complete engagement with inner attention. It is the very representation of speed and commercial output which the rest of the artworks seek to step away from. Through a focus on sleep, the artist engages in the ultimate form of slowing down, where we completely disengage with the world, rest and reset, our perceived world being entirely internal, through dreams or dreamless sleep. However, in this instance, sleep has been transformed into a commodity, and taking time to rest compromises personal productivity. The artist posits that even the space of sleep has been colonised by ever increasing economic pressures, consumption and waking labour. Though the protagonist is still, a static element in the otherwise ever shifting visual landscape, their mind is not empty – projected as the bombardment of colour, receipts and allegories of consumption which populate the scene. The exhausted protagonist foregoes sleep in favour of productivity, forever engaged in the creation of outputs.
Instead of focussing on internal human experience, “Fragments of a Landscape” by Jingchao Yang invites the viewer to turn their attention to their surroundings, presenting three landscapes within varying degrees of human construction. The first, a city, demonstrates the confinement of green spaces into squares between highrise buildings. The second, a farm, shows human need and nature working in harmony. The third, a forest, removes human interference, returning to ecological equilibrium. The slow panoramic views invite the viewer to contemplate the vistas, slowing down the process of viewing and forcing elongated interaction with each scene. This piece does not force an opinion onto the viewer, but asks them, through slow engagement, to experience levels of human intervention, and to perceive of how these environments make them feel.
“Delay Zone” by Renwei Liu brings the viewer’s focus back to the self, directly engaging with a common modern fear – the fear of constant perception. The artwork is divided into 5 sections, within which the artist explores different forms of surveillance and its effects. The first introduces the protagonist in front of paparazzi with several video cameras pointing towards him, confetti flying and him elevated on a pedestal as if accepting an award. This appears to be a depiction of reality. This is then followed by 4 chapters in which the protagonist’s attention is directed inwards, revealing the inner workings of his mind, represented by a circular room lined with screens. In chapters one and two the screens show mouths and eyes, while the protagonist cowers away from a camera, raising his arms as if defending himself from being viewed, or shakes his head. In chapters 3 & 4 the protagonist now dances and lounges in front of a camera, the screens still depicting mouths and eyes. These chapters seem to show how the protagonist perceives himself, like a performing monkey, acting for the perception and gossip of others. In these moments of personal contemplation we are given a view into the protagonist’s perception of themselves, and how constant surveillance has warped their inner world.
Works by José Lara Menéndez, Médéric Corbin, Sam Morgan, Shunyuan and Xiaotong Shen touch on similar themes, inviting the viewer to take the time to slow down, interact with the artworks, and take a break from the constant hustle and bustle of modern life. Collectively, the artworks presented in When Everything Slows Down show slowness not just as the absence of speed, but as a framework through which we may detach from the overwhelming forward motion of contemporary life and reconnect with the self, the environment, and with lived experience.
By Tabitha Green
Top Image Credit
Installation view from When Everything Slows Down, Courtesy of 1215 Gallery.
