When dreams become an exhibition: Isaac Julien at gres art 671
M
useum Dreams is the first major retrospective in Italy dedicated to Sir Isaac Julien, a British artist and filmmaker among the most influential figures in the dialogue between video art, installation and contemporary visual culture. Conceived by GRES Art 671 and curated by Nathan Ladd, the exhibition has been developed in close relationship with the architecture of the former industrial site on Via San Bernardino in Bergamo, transforming the exhibition space into a living, immersive and resonant environment where images, sound, memory and movement interact.
The project brings together five major multi-screen video installations created by Isaac Julien over more than two decades of his career. Complementing the works is a rich selection of photographs, sculptures, artefacts and archival materials. The result is an immersive journey that retraces the evolution of Julien’s artistic research and highlights his ability to construct layered narratives, in which cinema, dance, architecture, music, photography and sculpture come together to explore history, identities, museum institutions and forms of collective memory.
The five selected works — The Long Road to Mazatlán (1999), Vagabondia (2000), Baltimore (2003), Lina Bo Bardi: A Marvellous Entanglement (2019) and Once Again… (Statues Never Die) (2022) — form a constellation of environments that are both autonomous and deeply interconnected. Dance becomes a means of inhabiting and activating museums (as a narrative and spatial device); nomadism and cultural migration are explored through a reflection on the post-colonial gaze (expressed in crossings and displacements); the city emerges as a body shaped by memory and social tensions; architecture becomes a field of cultural and political relationships; and the museum itself is questioned as a site of symbolic power, preservation and knowledge production.
As is always the case at gres art 671, in Museum Dreams the concept of the museum is not presented as a static space, but as a dynamic place of desire, projection and relationships. Moving images transform the environment that hosts them and invite the audience to become an active part of the experience, turning into what Julien defines as a “mobile spectator”: no longer a passive viewer, but one who constructs their own path by choosing times, directions and connections, moving freely among installations, sounds, colours and perspectives.
The exhibition design, created by Adjaye Associates with lighting design by Viabizzuno, amplifies this dimension. The large pavilion of gres art 671 is transformed into a sequence of immersive environments, alternating more intimate spaces with moments of openness. Windows, passages and shaped openings allow visitors to sense the presence of all the works from the centre of the pavilion, creating a rhythm of perceptual compression and expansion. The colours chosen by the artist for the installations — red, blue, turquoise and silver — are not merely decorative, but form an integral part of the world evoked within each work.
The space of gres art 671 thus becomes an active component of the exhibition itself, participating in the unfolding of the works. It is precisely in this relationship between place and vision, and in its ability to engage the audience, that Museum Dreams fully expresses the vocation of gres art 671: a cultural centre capable of fostering new forms of experience, participation and reflection.
The exhibition catalogue, published by gres art 671, is the first Italian publication dedicated to Isaac Julien, featuring original contributions and in-depth insights into his research. Complementing the exhibition, a public programme of talks, performances, musical events and participatory activities further confirms GRES Art 671’s role as an open cultural platform, capable of bringing together different languages, communities and audiences.
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Photo credits: Diego De Pol