TORONTO.- Acclaimed Italian artist Diego Marcon (b. 1985) makes his Canadian debut at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) this summer, with an exhibition of four films. Presented together, these works form a constellation of looping scenes in which tenderness, absurdity, and melancholy circulate without resolution. Marking the AGO’s first partnership with The Vega Foundation, Diego Marcon: The Bubble Boy opens on June 3, 2026, in the Philip Lind Gallery on Level 1. The exhibition is co-curated by John Zeppetelli, Guest Curator, and Julia Paoli, Director and Curator, The Vega Foundation, with Kate Whiteway, Assistant Curator, The Vega Foundation.
Working with a small team of close collaborators, Marcon composes every aspect of his films—from set and lighting, to costume, sound, and script—playing with familiar tropes from the golden age of cartoons and Italian opera while subtly unmooring them from expectation.
Nestled amongst an installation of predominantly nineteenth-century Canadian and European paintings, Marcon's camera-less animation Untitled (Head Falling 01) (2015), leads visitors towards the exhibition. Displayed on an intimate television monitor, the silent loop features a head that repeatedly drops and dangles before returning to its starting point.
The title of the exhibition refers to an 1884 painting by Ontario-born artist Paul Peel, an artist who specialized in sentimental portraits of childhood innocence. Marcon first encountered Peel’s painting The Bubble Boy while visiting the AGO in 2025, and the beloved painting, accomplished in Peel’s rigorous academic style, will be installed as part of Marcon’s exhibition.
Inside the exhibition, visitors encounter a trio of unsettling domestic scenes. Set in the family home, Marcon subverts these familiar spaces into sites of uncanny tension. A chilling and macabre musical confession, The Parents’ Room (2021), features human actors rendered with prosthetics and CGI, creating an image that feels artificial, yet strangely alive. The looping six-minute film is bookended by the arrival of a blackbird on the windowsill, while a man and his family recount a gruesome series of events through song. In Dolle (2023), a pair of animatronic moles obsessively count and recount figures in their burrow, continually disrupted by the wheezing coughs of their sick pup and ominous sounds from above ground. Never resolving, the twenty-nine-minute film is both charming and tense.
“We’re honoured to bring Diego Marcon’s work to Canada for the first time through this partnership with the Art Gallery of Ontario,” says Julia Paoli, Director and Curator of The Vega Foundation. “This presentation reflects Vega’s commitment to supporting ambitious, international artistic voices and creating meaningful contexts for their work to be viewed in Canada and beyond. Having worked closely with Diego over the last several years, we’re especially proud to realize The Bubble Boy and to bring this extraordinary body of work to audiences in Toronto.”
Krapfen (2025), Marcon’s newest film, is co-commissioned by Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Lafayette Anticipations, the New Museum, the Renaissance Society, and The Vega Foundation. A surreal musical comedy staged in a bright yellow bedroom, a kid, performed by dancer Violet Savage, is tormented by a pair of gloves, a foulard, a pair of trousers, and a pullover. Blending slapstick and horror, classical ballet, and contemporary choreography in a four-minute loop, the chorus of clothing implores the child to eat a snack: the German apricot jam-filled pastry called a krapfen. “Why don’t you just eat up your krapfen? It’s your favourite apricot krapfen,” the clothes taunt.
Diego Marcon (b. 1985, Busto Arsizio, Italy) graduated from IUAV University of Arts of Venice (2012). Marcon has exhibited internationally with solo presentations including Krapfen, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2026); Prom, Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2026); Krapfen, Renaissance Society, Chicago (2025); Forza Cani, Le Consortium, Dijon (2025); ToonsTunes (Four Pathetic Movements), The Shop at Sadie Coles HQ, London (2025); La Gola, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2024); La Gola, Kunstverein in Hamburg (2024); Dolle, Sadie Coles HQ, London and Galerie Buchholz, Berlin (both 2023); Have You Checked the Children, Kunsthalle Basel (2023); Glassa, Centro Pecci, Prato (2023); Dramoletti, Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Teatro Gerolamo, Milan (2023); Monelle, Sadie Coles HQ, London (2023); and The Parents' Room, Museo Madre, Naples (2021). He has exhibited in numerous group exhibitions including Collection Exhibition of Saastamoinen Foundation, EMMA Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Finland (2025); Just Kids, Gammel Strand, Copenhagen (2025); Flowers of Romance Part II, Lodovico Corsini, Brussels (2024); Artificial Optimism, Den Frie, Copenhagen (2024); Nebula, Fondazione In Between Art Film, Complesso dell’Ospedaletto, Venice (2024); Biennale de I’Image en Mouvement 24: A Cosmic Movie Camera, Centre d’Art Contemporian, Genève (2024); After Laughter Comes Tears, MUDAM The Contemporary Art Museum of Luxembourg (2023); The Milk of Dreams, 59th Biennale Arte, Venice (2022); and Sanguine. Luc Tuymans on Baroque, Fondazione Prada, Milan (2018). Marcon’s films have featured in festivals including Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight; International Film Festival Rotterdam; Vienna International Film Festival; Festival du nouveau cinéma, Montreal; and BFI London Film Festival, among others. Marcon currently lives and works in Italy.
