fantastical exhibition JUJU’s castle opens as jean jullien’s first solo show in shanghai

JUJU’s castle transforms the nanzuka art institute into a fantastical fortress comprising paintings and sculpture by jean jullien.

kat barandy August 14, 2025 3 min

whimsical fortress opens at nanzuka art institute

The Nanzuka Art Institute in Shanghai presents JUJU’s Castle, the first solo exhibition in China by French artist Jean Jullien. Spread across multiple gallery spaces, the show comprises painting, sculpture, and installation into a spatial experience that unfolds like an imagined fortress. The presentation includes over eighty new paintings created during Jullien’s time in Tokyo, joined by three-dimensional works and a large-scale installation that turns the institute into a multi-room narrative environment.

Each room is conceived as a ‘dungeon’ within the castle, referencing the level-based structure of role-playing games. Visitors are positioned as protagonists — warrior, elf, mage, or hero — encountering fantastical creatures and settings. This transformation of the gallery into an architectural sequence gives the exhibition the pacing of an exploratory journey, moving from one immersive space to another.

juju's jean jullien shanghai — images © Nanzuka Art Institute

jean jullien’s imagined worlds arrive in shanghai

JUJU’s Castle in Shanghai draws heavily from artist Jean Jullien’s personal and pop-cultural influences like manga, anime, tabletop role-playing games. Still, the show is anchored in the physicality of its staging. Walls and partitions within Nanzuka Art Institute become thresholds between imagined worlds, while scale and proportion shift from room to room to control rhythm and mood. Sculptural elements act as both standalone artworks and environmental markers, shaping the way visitors navigate the space.

Material contrasts are used to balance the playful imagery with the solidity of its architectural setting. Painted surfaces meet modeled forms, and furniture-like objects are placed with deliberate alignment, underscoring the relationship between art and the structure that houses it.

childhood memories inform JUJU’s Castle

The narrative foundation of JUJU’s Castle stems from Jean Jullien’s childhood memories of his uncle’s role-playing adventures and collections of hand-painted miniatures. These recollections become an informal blueprint for the exhibition’s layout, translating the intimacy of a private memory into a shared architectural experience. Each gallery room reflects a different narrative beat, with entryways, corners, and sightlines acting as cues for the unfolding story.

By treating the castle as a composite of rooms linked by a journey, Jullien aligns his work with principles familiar to architectural design: sequencing, spatial hierarchy, and thematic zoning. The result is a gallery transformed into a walkable story, where movement through the space mirrors movement through a fictional landscape.