Gus Van Sant - ICONS

Co-produced by the National Cinema Museum with the Cinémathèque française in Paris and the Cinémathèque de Lausanne, the ICONS exhibition – by curator Matthieu Orléan - which extensively reconstructs the artistic career of American director Gus Van Sant, from the early Polaroids, to his watercolours, going through paintings and photographic cut-ups, is arriving in Turin from 6 October 2016 to 9 January 2017, following the "Paris premiere”. At the core, of course, is his cinema, with the many literary, artistic and musical influences that characterise it.

The exhibition is divided into sections which reflect the complexity of the work of Gus van Sant, who taps into many disciplines over his artistic career, from its origins to the present day: photography, cinema, painting and music. The diverse and valuable items on display are over 180, and include original photographic prints, preparatory drawings for feature films (partly never made), unpublished short films, music videos, makings-of and edits with the most famous and iconic sequences taken from his films.

The coordination of the Italian exhibition is curated by Grazia Paganelli and Stefano Boni.

Among the most interesting directors on the American independent scene, but able on several occasions to deal with big Hollywood productions, Gus Van Sant is versatile artist and is active on several fronts, in addition to film, painting, photography and writing. Common elements in all of his languages are the urban landscape of Portland (where he lives), desert areas, intermittent visions, and a certain altered perception of youth, which he learned through his proximity to the instances of the Beat Generation. Elephant is the film which guaranteed him his first great success in 2003, thanks to the Palme d'Or he won at Cannes for Best Picture and Best Director, placing him in the general public limelight as a restless author, who moves mainly along the path of connections between adolescence and maturity, the need for love along diverse trends and current social dynamics, between classicism and experimentation.

Beyond the production commitment to each film, his cinema is existential and unconventional, capable of taking forward subversive speech, a sophisticated formal study of painting, which he has practiced since his years at Design school, the profound immediacy of photography and the physicality of

low-cost cinema. Think of movies like Mala Noche (1989), My own private Idaho (1991), Good Will Hunting (1997), Psycho (1999), Last Days (2005), Restless (2011), differing yet highly consistent works in their viewpoint and in the rendering of the troubles and worries of life.

The emblem of a radical and daring cinema, Gus Van Sant is an absolutely paradoxical independent filmmaker, capable of moving sinuously through the paths of the most mainstream cinema as shown by his hit films Good Will Hunting  and Milk, produced by Hollywood studios, which have captivated audiences and won several prestigious awards.

The modern heir of the Beat Generation, which political values and provocative style he advocates (to the point of devising many underground projects with writer William Burroughs), Van Sant is the director of youth greedy for life. His frames depict skaters, students, and rock / grunge musicians, on the edge of an adult world which rejects them, with an intimate glance. A passion for the brazen and seductive bodies which we also find in the Polaroids shot in the 70s and 80s, portraying future cinema stars (Joaquin Phoenix, Keanu Reeves, Nicole Kidman, Matt Damon, Uma Thurman, Ben Affleck, immortalised in eternal youth), in his photographs, in his collages, in his large format watercolours (in David Hockney or Elizabeth Peyton’s style), as well as in his video installations.

The exhibition plunges into Gus Van Sant’s multifaceted artistic universe, presenting his figurative and plastic works and his films throughout an organised circuit, as well as his original partnerships with the likes of William Eggleston, Bruce Webber, M Blash or David Bowie. His direct relationship with emotions is highlighted, his special sense of space, in which dream and reality end up by merging: the infinity of the desert in Gerry, the labyrinthine high school space in Elephant, the intersecting of the streets in Portland at right angles in Mala Noche, up to the curves of the infamous skate-park in Paranoid Park.  (Matthieu Orléan, curator of the exhibition)

For the entire duration of the exhibition, learning activities will be featured, including in-depth meetings with teachers and lectures and workshops at the museum.

Facility Access Information is available to the public in order to facilitate visiting the exhibition.

Cards will be located on a special totem for high-legibility consultation (Italian, English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Chinese), with Easyreading fonts for dyslexics (Italian, English, French, German, Spanish) and easy-text (Italian and English) and Braille cards in Italian with a visual-tactile diagram of the exhibition. Along the ramp, there will be audiovisual content in Italian activated through QR code and NFC (with LIS - Italian Sign Language interpreter - and subtitles), visual-tactile reproductions of some items on display, Braille labels on the handrail, monitors with dedicated headphone inputs to adjust the volume.

The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive retrospective at the Cinema Massimo (5-31 October 2016) which will offer all Gus Van Sant’s films in their original language with Italian subtitles.

A rich catalogue will complete this tribute to Gus Van Sant, published by Silvana Editoriale, which includes an introduction by Alberto Barbera, a long interview with the filmmaker conducted by Matthieu Orléan plus essays by Stephane Bouquet, Stefano Boni, Bertrand Schefer and Benjamin Thorel.

The collaboration between the National Cinema Museum and Turin Airport is ongoing, offering a selection of 12 photographs in the arrivals hall from October 12, not only visible by passengers but also by all those there waiting for them. The museum presence at the airport is completed by interactive screens - both at the arrivals floor and in the departure hall - through which it is possible to access some of the content of the National Cinema Museum collections and learn about all the scheduled events.

This exhibition is organised under the patronage of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism.