18/11/2025
Review: Dan Lie ’Sleeping Methodologies‘, Spike Island
Dan Lie’s ’Sleeping Methodologies’ is un-monumental in the best way possible. Premised on the intention of creating an atmosphere that invites visitors to slow down and reflect, the exhibition is a multi-sensory and aroma-therapeutic experience, scattered with installations that repeat form but shift subtly in composition.
‘Sleeping Methodologies’ begins from a deeply personal place: the artist’s grief and fatigue, and their admitted need for a clean slate, after a period of exhaustion and burnout. Upon reflection, this is why the exhibition resonated with me so deeply, having emerged myself from a period of burnout. The show poses the anti-monumental provocation ‘What would happen if I stopped?’, a question that feels both risky and necessary. In a society that perpetuates fear around slowing down and pausing, this exhibition advocates that rest itself can be an act of resistance.
With no particular show stopper, Lei instead makes use of humble materials, undemanding of attention. Popcorn garlands trail from floor to wall to ceiling, guiding the eye around the open space but without dictation, reinforcing the exhibition’s gentle refusal of spectacle. The space itself is bathed in warm light and scattered with repetitions of standing stones, mattresses, lamps, and wrapped chairs. Configurations that feel like recurring thoughts in altered variations, surfacing and dissolving as you make your journey through the space.
Particularly striking is the collection of chairs wrapped in cotton dyed with tea and coffee. These everyday substances, often ritualistic in themselves, conjure moments of rest in the familiar invitation of a tea break. While some chairs are positioned on the floor, others are mounted on the walls, defamiliarised, perhaps to emphasise the very distance we often place between ourselves and rest, or perhaps even to reframe rest not as a utilitarian pause but as an object of contemplation.
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