gres art 671 presents the first major retrospective in Italy dedicated to Sir Isaac Julien (London, 1960), a key figure in the dialogue between video art, installation art and contemporary visual culture. The exhibition will run from 10 April to October 2026.

Conceived in dialogue with the architecture of the gres art space in Bergamo, the exhibition retraces more than 30 years of artistic research through five major multiple-screen video installations, four of which have never been shown in Italy, as well as photographic works, sculptures and archival material.

An immersive journey that sets space, history and vision in motion, the exhibition expands the reflection on the role of the museum and the possibility—and necessity—for the public to be active participants.

A project to discover, learn about, and explore the research of the British artist, knighted (“Sir”) by Queen Elizabeth in 2022 for his contributions to art and, known for several participations in the Venice Biennale and whose works are part of the collections of MoMA, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Art Institute, Chicago, as well as Victoria and Albert Museum and Tate in London.

The exhibition, curated by guest curator Nathan Ladd, brings together five large-scale video installations made over more than three decades, in dialogue with photographs, sculptures and archival materials, traversing key moments in Julien’s career, exploring how moving images can transform space, activate historical memory and put back into circulation narratives sedimented over time. Multi-screen installations of varying scale and complexity, challenge the idea of the museum as a static place, proposing it instead as a dynamic site of projection, montage, and relationship—a philosophy that gres art 671 seeks to embody with its vocation and mission as a multidisciplinary space.

The exhibition unfolds as a sequence of environments that can be entered and exited freely, immersive spaces of different shapes and colors that can be accessed and moved through, each conceived as an autonomous world and at the same time part of a unitary organism, in which sound also plays a central role as an intangible architectural element. In The Long Road to Mazatlán (1999), a three-screen installation, the collaboration with choreographer Javier de Frutos introduces dance as a narrative and spatial device, anticipating a choreographic conception of the image that runs through Julien’s entire practice. Vagabondia (2000), a two-screen installation, translates the theme of nomadism and cultural migration into a fragmented filmic structure of crossings, suspensions and dislocations. With Baltimore (2003), a three-channel installation, the focus shifts to urban space and its memory: the city emerges as a body marked by social tensions, in which architecture becomes an active part of the narrative.

This relationship between space, history and image reaches a monumental complexity in Lina Bo Bardi: A Marvellous Entanglement (2019), a nine-screen installation that intertwines architecture, politics, modernity, and decolonization of the gaze through the figure of Lina Bo Bardi, an Italian-born and Brazilian naturalized architect and designer active within the modernist scene, restoring her thought as an open field of cultural and transnational relations. The installation was exhibited at MAXXI in Rome in 2020. The path culminates in Once Again… (Statues Never Die) (2022), a five-screen installation accompanied by sculptural artifacts. In this work, Julien explicitly addresses the history of Western museums and the ways in which African material culture have been collected, exhibited, and interpreted.

In the space of gres art, moving images dialogue with artifacts, sculptures, and museum conventions, challenging the separation between object and representation and encouraging a critical reflection on institutions as sites of symbolic power and knowledge construction.

The exhibition design, by Adjaye Associates, transforms the large gres art pavilion space, alternating closed and immersive environments with moments of visual openness, in which vistas, passages and shaped openings allow the viewer glimpses of the overall architecture and the presence of the other works. These passages create a rhythm made up of perceptual compressions and expansions, without imposing an exhibition route, but inviting the audience to orient themselves freely through movement and direct experience. In some areas, deep perspectives allow several installations to be grasped simultaneously, restoring an overall view of the exhibition, particularly in the central space. In other spaces, the invitation is to concentrate in intimate encounters where each room is defined by specific colors—red, blue, turquoise, silver—chosen by the artist: color does not play a decorative function, but becomes an integral part of the installation itself.

The project also reflects on the preservation and aesthetic encounter of video works and moving images, questioning the role of institutions as places of archiving and, at the same time, as devices capable of putting history back into motion. This reflection is intertwined with the social and political themes central to Isaac Julien’s research, themes addressed through layered narratives that operate on multiple levels: historical, institutional, corporeal, visual and spatial. Through this constellation of works, the audience is invited to become what Julien calls a “mobile spectator”: not a frontal and static observer, but an active participant that constructs their own viewing path, choosing times, directions and relationships. Indeed, movement becomes an integral part of the exhibition experience, transforming the visit into an act of participation and relationship.

The space of gres art 671 thus allows itself to be redesigned by the artist’s work as a living and resonant organism: not a neutral container, but also an active participant in the visual and narrative unfolding of the works. The industrial architecture of the former factory, with its considerable dimensions and traces of previous functions, joins the exhibition dramaturgy, amplifying the tension between image, sound, body and movement. Isaac Julien disrupts the static nature of the institution: his works put history, space and audience in motion, blurring and disrupting the boundaries of space and time.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog, published by gres art: the first publication in Italian dedicated to the artist, with insights into his research and unpublished contributions by Nathan Ladd, José Esteban Muñoz, Julian Lucas and Giuliana Bruno.

Isaac Julien: “Museum Dreams is, for me, one of the most ambitious and complete exhibitions I have ever made. It brings together over three decades of work into a single, immersive journey where image, sound, architecture and choreography meet. I am incredibly excited to see these works reimagined in this way, in dialogue with a unique architectural design, specifically created for gres art 671”.

Nathan Ladd: “Blurring and breaking the boundaries of time and space, Julien sets history in motion. He transgresses canonical narratives and reimagines the lives of people and objects often left in the corners of history, forgotten or ignored in our collective memory”

Roberto Pesenti: “Does a museum have dreams? For us, it does. gres art 671 was conceived to give life to the dreams and emotions of its audiences, as well as to our own drive for innovation. It is certainly not a traditional museum, but rather a living space where art, culture and society can meet and dream together. Isaac Julien, an internationally recognised figure in visual arts and research on identities, honours us with the opportunity to present his first retrospective exhibition in Italy. Following two group exhibitions, this also allows us to return to the monographic narrative of a single artist, creating a show that completely reimagines the space and, we hope, transforms the way it is perceived.”

Francesca Acquati: “Isaac Julien embodies our Museum Dreams. Developing this exhibition together with such a refined artist and thinker has enabled us to give form and space to an ongoing reflection on what a museum-led institution should represent and promote today—while dreaming and projecting itself towards the future. Beyond the dream lies beauty, which in Isaac Julien’s work becomes a powerful and universal point of access. Emotion comes before reason, allowing audiences to enter the extraordinary worlds of his films and installations, within which one encounters an endless network of references and citations to art history, cinema, culture, society, and the wider world.”

at gres art 671, Bergamo
until October 10, 2026

Mousse Magazine and Publishing

Message History

Delivery option(s)