Isaac Julien Returns to the Cutting Room Floor of History

Isaac Julien Returns to the Cutting Room Floor of History

SAN FRANCISCO — Time folds unto itself and reflects historical and contemporary moments that have shaped society in Isaac Julien’s I Dream a World, the British artist’s first comprehensive museum survey, and his first retrospective in the United States, at San Francisco’s de Young Museum. Light bends around corners and cascades over mirrored walls as time stretches like silk across several galleries in the subterranean expanse of the museum’s co…

Isaac Julien Gets an Electrifying US Retrospective at Long Last

Perhaps you don’t associate Blaxploitation filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles with Renaissance painting? I didn’t, at least not before last week, but now I’ll never be able to unhitch Van Peebles from the image of him admiring The Ideal City, a quattrocento painting of an open plaza. That image figures prominently in Isaac Julien’s video installation Baltimore (2003), one of 13 transfixing works in Julien’s newly opened retrospective at San Francisc…