Alice Gallery in Brussels is celebrating Jean Jullien’s long-awaited return to the space with the exhibition “Return to Tokugawa Village”. This new selection of works, bearing the traces of an intense preparatory period the artist spent in Tokyo, reads both as a personal homecoming story and as a sensory journey between different geographies.
Over the past three years, while preparing for exhibitions in China and Japan, Jullien lived in Tokyo’s neighbourhood known as “Tokugawa Village”, gathering its everyday rhythm, quietness, and hidden energy into his paintings. The word “Return” refers not only to a physical coming-back but also to an inner rapprochement with home, family, and the feeling of belonging.
The series maps a multilayered voyage: from the calm streets of Tokugawa Village to the frenzy of Shibuya, from a surf break in Yokokawa to the serenity of Naoshima, and even to the Brittany coast where the artist’s own roots lie.
Jullien’s paintings are marked by rapid, lively brushstrokes and simplified forms that generate a sense of movement in opposition to the frozen frame of photography. Each canvas seems to carry an unfinished moment, deliberately leaving empty space for the viewer to complete with their own memory. This turns the works into zones of escape—a state of feeling good exactly where you are while looking somewhere else.
The exhibition also includes a special limited-edition print.
For anyone who wants to make a gentle return to Jean Jullien’s world and pause for a moment in this flow of memory stretching from Tokyo to Brittany, “Return to Tokugawa Village” is one of the season’s most heartfelt invitations.
Location: Alice Gallery, Brussels
Duration: Continues until 13 December 2025
