When Walls Become Doors explores new forms of space at Galleria Continua

Galleria Continua presents When Walls Become Doors - Part 1, a two-part group exhibition running from May 31 – December 20, 2026 across its Les Moulins venue and Studio Orta, in collaboration with Leo Orta. The art exhibition brings together works by 20 contemporary artists, exploring connections between architecture, sculpture and fiction through speculative structures, interiors, shelters and objects.

“The exhibition takes the mock-up as its point of departure, not as a reduction of reality, but as anticipation. These objects do not show what will be; they make visible what could be otherwise,” Galleria Continua notes in the show’s description.

The show at the contemporary art gallery features Leila Alaoui, Leandro Erlich, Osvaldo González, Subodh Gupta, Jorge Macchi, Ornaghi & Prestinari, Giovanni Ozzola, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Sislej Xhafa and Nari Ward. The presentation at Studio Orta includes Bianca Bondi, Andrea Branzi, Maty Biayenda, Loucia Carlier, Paul Créange, Serban Ionescu, Marc Leschelier, Lucy Orta, Bob Smith and Zyva Studio. 

“Speculative houses, inverted interiors, porous spaces, unstable shelters and impossible architectures coexist within a journey that invites us to conceive form as a passage rather than a certainty. Walls cease to be limits and become thresholds,” the art gallery states.

Among the works at Galleria Continua, Alaoui’s photographs address migration through images of cracked surfaces and arid landscapes, reflecting the experiences of people who have crossed the sub-Saharan desert. González uses transparent adhesive tape, plexiglass and LEDs to create a space that recalls stained glass and architectural interiors. Gupta transforms stainless-steel household utensils into a sculpture, elevating domestic objects. Macchi’s vertical zipper creates the appearance of a fissure in space, suggesting a passage between reality and fiction.

Elsewhere, Ornaghi & Prestinari combine palissandro santos, alabaster, ceramic and fabric in a sculpture that balances contrasting materials and temporalities. Ozzola’s photographic series examines light, the horizon and the human impulse toward the edge, while Marthine Tayou’s immersive installation considers ideas of home, family and belonging through photographs and collected objects.

Finally, Ward transforms doors fitted with pockets of down into portals of protection and hope. Xhafa introduces political and historical references into a domestic setting through a table and plates decorated with a keffiyeh motif.

“When Walls Become Doors brings together proposals that question what it means to inhabit, physically, politically and emotionally, and explores points of convergence between architecture, sculpture and fiction through objects that open onto new ways of being in the world,” Galleria Continua shares.