Slow Dance

Sylvia Neil and Daniel Fischel Galleries

Sep 12, 2026–Mar 21, 2027

Slow Dance features a group of artists who use performance to recover forms of slowness that resist contemporary demands to constantly perform. The exhibition approaches performance in two registers: as an artistic medium rooted in the live presence of bodies and as an economic imperative characterized by the pervasive demand for productivity, speed and efficiency. At any given moment, we might feel this pressure differently—it may inspire and motivate us, spur optimism or provoke anxiety and depression, induce fatigue or provide fuel to keep going in spite of it all. Through gestures of suspension, inaction and stillness, the artists in the exhibition investigate the politics of the body’s labor and maintenance.

Featuring works by Brendan Fernandes, Gordon Hall, Geumhyung Jeong, Carolyn Lazard, Melanie McLain and Cally Spooner, this multidisciplinary exhibition includes painting, sculpture, video and live performance. Focused on how bodies wear away and how they endure, these artists contend with the near constant obligation to perform in labor markets, the protracted economies of waiting and fatigue’s latent potential as a form of resistance. While exploring conditions of failure, breakdown or exhaustion, artists in the show model new modes of reciprocity, intimacy and connection that challenge the weathering effects of our contemporary imperative to perform.

The exhibition will include in-gallery performance activations throughout the run of the show.

Slow Dance is organized by Jadine Collingwood, Pamela Alper Associate Curator.