Julien Ceccaldi: Adult Theater
Thu, May 29
|MoMA PS1
Julien Ceccaldi: Adult Theater runs March 27 – August 25, 2025, at MoMA PS1. A hyper-stylized solo debut confronting digital life and consumerist drama.
Time & Location
May 29, 2025, 7:00 AM – Aug 25, 2025, 11:00 PM
MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Ave, Queens, NY 11101, USA
About the event
From March 27 to August 25, 2025, MoMA PS1 presents Adult Theater, the first U.S. solo museum exhibition of Julien Ceccaldi—the French-Canadian artist whose aesthetic draws from manga, animation, and the chaos of online identity.
Anchoring the show is a newly commissioned, large-scale painting that transforms PS1’s first-floor galleries into a theatrical arena of hyperconsumerism, vulnerability, and digital overload. With techniques borrowed from Italian Renaissance trompe l’oeil to anime freeze frames, Ceccaldi collapses classical illusion with pop surrealism, reflecting a genre-bending visual language deeply attuned to the contradictions of modern life.
Exhibition highlights:
A monumental installation that immerses viewers in digitally distorted intimacy
Works that blend melodrama, romance, and social satire
Influences ranging from shōjo manga to autobiographical comics and anime nostalgia