Unhurried Time

Date:: 1 Oct–9 Nov 2025

Age:

Type:

Place:: Vaults

Age restrictions: 12+

Exhibition at the Vaults invites us to pause, to turn to contemplation and reflection, and to immerse ourselves, if only briefly, in the restorative state of slowness.

The idea that the modern world is chaotic and that happiness can only be found by ceasing to rush every minute is far from new: Epicurus and Aristotle, Rousseau and Nietzsche, the hermit Henry Thoreau and Geir Berthelsen, founder of the World Institute of Slowness, all spoke of the need for less fuss. By the end of the last century, the “slow movement” had spread to food, travel, education, fashion, science—and, of course, art. The idea of slow art holds that works should be looked at for a long time—far longer than the few seconds museum visitors spend on average before a painting. But slow art also has another side, one that concerns the very process of creation.

The project continues the tradition started by the exhibitions Vaults 360° (2023) and Invisible Routines (2024).

Illustration: Kirill Gorbunov

What does slow art mean in terms of its production? A preliminary investigation of the theme, unhurried reflection on the project’s concept, careful selection of materials and techniques, and meticulous attention to every detail of the object. When an artist works slowly, the process seems as important as the result, and sometimes becomes part of the concept itself. These are the traits that unite the works of the fifteen artists featured in the exhibition Unhurried Time. All of them have taken part in programmes at the Vaults Centre for Artistic Production—ColLab, Friends of the Vaults, and the Photo Basis printmaking laboratory.

The themes explored in these projects are intimately tied to the nature and process of thought itself: what fuels it, what seizes the mind in an instant, and what slows it down. Ekaterina Gerasimenko turns her gaze to details and everyday objects that usually pass unnoticed. A similar everyday focus is also seen in Lena Solovyova’s photographic series Non-Place, in which she creates, quite literally, portraits of modest things—building materials and tools. For Anna Birch, the protagonists are the unremarkable façades of high-rise buildings: anonymous, monotonous, and seemingly outside of time.

Another theme shared by the artists is that of memory and recollection. On the one hand, it is a kind of journey through time, a turn towards the past; on the other, remembering demands a slowing down, a pause in the rush of things. Kristina Syrchikova is particularly drawn to the physical carriers of memory—how they change over time, how they themselves grow old. Maria Timofeeva pieces together the story of a house in Vorkuta from the recollections of its former residents, thus granting it a new life. Oksana Afanasieva revisits her own fears and experiences from the past, observing, as if from a distance, how they have been transformed and how they continue to influence her present.

Practitioners of slow art frequently turn to experimental techniques or invent entirely new ones. Nikita Baranov, for instance, devised a cinematic device for both producing and viewing thermocinema—a film medium in which the image is carried not on traditional film, but on receipt paper that responds not to light but to heat. His invention, the Thermokinescope, embodies this idea. Evgeniy Klimin created an installation entitled Glyphs, composed of LED indicators representing rare and little-known languages. Daniil Tolkalin, in his Colour Synthesis series, explores the nature and composition of colour through the use of film, multiple exposure, and colour separation. All the photographs on display are produced using analogue hand-printing techniques—a slow, meticulous process that allows space for error, revision, and discovery.

Artists

Oksana Afanasieva — Nikita Baranov — Anna Birch — Ilya Buslakov — Ekaterina Gerasimenko — Pavel Grishin — Evgeniy Klimin — Artem Lyapin — Lyubov Remizova — Lena Solovyeva — Kristina Syrchikova — Maria Timofeeva — Daniil Tolkalin — Jegor Zaika — Alexandra Zamurueva