MUSEUM DREAMS, gres art 671, Bergamo, Italy

Conceived by gres art 671 and curated by Nathan Ladd, MUSEUM DREAMS has been developed specifically for the architectural and conceptual structure of the Bergamo space. Bringing together five major large-scale installations, Once Again ... (Statues Never Die) (2022); Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement (2019); Baltimore (2002); Vagabondia (2000); The Long Road to Mazatlán (1999), MUSEUM DREAMS draws on more than three decades of Julien’s practice, highlighting his distinctive approach of working across disciplines including film, dance, photography, music, and sculpture.

With his poetic language, Julien constructs carefully layered narratives that examine desire, social memory and museum histories, offering a critical framework for interrogating and interpreting both historical and contemporary events. At gres art 671, Julien deconstructs the museum spaces as living, active participants in the parcours of his film installations. MUSEUM DREAMS reflects on the architectural settings in which moving image works are presented and preserved – both institutionally and in the repository of our own experiences – foregrounding questions of our time memory through five immersive film installations, alongside sculptures, artefacts, photographs and archival material.

Through this assemblage of works, viewers are invited to become what Julien describes as a “mobile spectator,” moving freely across kaleidoscopic installations where image, sound, and architecture converge. The exhibition unfolds as a sensorial encounter that goes beyond limitations of classification, creating the language of images that disrupts the narrative logic which shapes our everyday perception.