Gus Van Sant Retrospective Carte B
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30.06 — 26.08.2018 English Exhibition An exhibition produced by Gus Van Sant 22.06 — 16.09.2018 Galleries A CONVERSATION LA TERRAZA D and E WITH GUS VAN SANT MAGNÉTICA CARTE BLANCHE PREVIEW OF For Gus Van Sant GUS VAN SANT’S LATEST FILM In the months of July and August, the Terrace of La Casa Encendida will once again transform into La Terraza Magnética. This year the programme will have an early start on Saturday, 30 June, with a double session to kick off the film cycle Carte Blanche for Gus Van Sant, a survey of the films that have most influenced the American director’s creative output, selected by Van Sant himself filmoteca espaÑola: for the exhibition. With this Carte Blanche, the director plunges us into his pecu- GUS VAN SANT liar world through his cinematographic and musical influences. The drowsy, sometimes melancholy, experimental and psychedelic atmospheres of his films will inspire an eclectic soundtrack RETROSPECTIVE that will fill with sound the sunsets at La Terraza Magnética. La Casa Encendida Opening hours facebook.com/lacasaencendida Ronda de Valencia, 2 Tuesday to Sunday twitter.com/lacasaencendida 28012 Madrid from 10 am to 10 pm. instagram.com/lacasaencendida T 902 430 322 The exhibition spaces youtube.com/lacasaencendida close at 9:45 pm vimeo.com/lacasaencendida blog.lacasaencendida.es lacasaencendida.es With the collaboration of Cervezas Alhambra “When I shoot my films, the tension between the story and abstraction is essential. Because I learned cinema through films made by painters. Through their way of reworking cinema and not sticking to the traditional rules that govern it. For me, it’s never a question of what the industry tells you to do or not to do—and this is what continues to preoccupy Gus Van Sant in an interview published for the first time in the catalogue of the exhibition me today.” Gus Van Sant / Icônes (Paris: La Cinémathèque française, 2016). 22.06 — 16.09.2018 La Casa Encendida proudly presents Gus Van Sant, the first retrospective in Spain dedicated to the films and artistic creations of the iconic American indie director. The exhibition offers a survey of the creative force and peculiar world of this legend of radical, non-conformist cinema through visual works (photographs, drawings, collages and storyboards never shown before in Spain), music and artistic collaborations (with William Burroughs, William Eggleston, Bruce Weber, David Bowie…). Born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1952, Gus Van Sant’s films are a snapshot of post-modern American history (post-pop, post-New Hollywood, post-militancy). Their complex narrative structure (in the form of mosaics or collages) and shifts in tone are disconcerting, creating a dissonant cinema where melancholy and humour are never treated as opposites. The exhibition offers us insight into the legendary director through his filmography, including his most experimental films, but also through an extensive array of Polaroid shots taken during the casting sessions for his early films (hundreds of actors, writers and anonymous people posed for his camera), as well as through paintings and drawings — portraits of random individuals, rebel faces found online that recall some of David Hockney’s works. Although Van Sant always keeps his painting separate from his film productions, both clearly intersect at certain points, and that common ground lends coherence to an oeuvre filled with recurring motifs. 1952 1970 Paolo Pasolini during Born in Louisville, Ken- He studies his senior the postproduction of tucky, on July 24. Son year of high school at Salò or the 120 Days of Betty and Gus Green Catlin Gabel School, of Sodom. Van Sant, Sr. He moves in Portland, Oregon. regularly with his fami- In New York, he meets ly throughout his child- 1971 one of his idols, poet hood and adolescence due He studies Film and William S. Burroughs. to his father’s job as Painting at the Rhode a salesman. Island School of Design, He moves to Los Angeles, where he also develops where he works as assis- 1964 his interest in mu- tant to Paramount pro- While at middle school sic and begins to make ducer-writer Ken Shapiro. in Darien, Connecticut, short 16mm films. He He holds various posi- two teachers (Robert meets his future friend tions as production as- LaVigne and David Sohn) and cameraman Eric sistant and editor, and initiate him in painting Alan Edwards. writes numerous scripts, and cinema, especially in particular one on in avant-garde filmmak- The Happy Organ (s h o r t): male prostitution which ers like Norman McLaren First film shot with fifteen years later and Robert Breer. Eric Alan Edwards. will become My Own Private Idaho. 1967 1972 Fun with a Bloodroot Little Johnny (s h o r t). (short): Animated film shot in 8mm, now lost. 1973 1/2 of a Telephone 1968 Conversation (s h o r t). He visits Manhattan regularly for screen- 1975 ings of experimental Late Morning Start films, in particular (short): End of stud- at the MoMA and at Jonas ies project inspired Mekas’ Anthology Film by Jean-Luc Godard Archives. He familiar- and Luis Buñuel. izes himself with Amer- ican underground cinema After graduating, he of the Sixties, includ- makes a study trip to ing productions by Andy Rome, where he witnesses Warhol, Stan Brakhage shootings of films by and Ron Rice. Federico Fellini, Tinto Brass and Lina Wertmül- ler. He also meets Pier George Kraychyk Good Will Hunting, 1997 Courtesy of Gus Van Sant Gus Van Sant Storyboard for Courtesy of the artist Mala Noche, 1985 1978 1981 My New Friend (s h o r t). The Discipline of DE He works as production (short): Adaptation of assistant at Cadwell 1985 the eponymous story by Davis’ advertising Switzerland (s h o r t). William S. Burroughs. agency in New York. The short is a parody 1986 of self-control. 1982 The Los Angeles Times He plays and records names Mala Noche the Van Sant works as sound songs for his 18 Songs best independent film of engineer on Penny Allen’s about Golf album, which the year. The film will Property, shot in Port- will not be released not be released in land, where he meets until 1998, with a cover Europe until 2006. Walt Curtis, poet of design by Van Sant. the Beat Generation and author of the novella My Friend (s h o r t): C o m- Mala Noche, which he edy about the physical decides to adapt. attraction one can feel for a friend. 1979 Alice in Hollywood Where Did She Go? Mala Noche © Sawtooth Film Company (short): Unsatisfied (short): Inspired with its result, Van by the death of his He forms the band Sant re-edits this paternal grandmother. Destroy All Blondes, screwball comedy sev- which will last eral times before mak- 1983 two years. ing a shorter version. He shoots Mala Noche in He doesn’t submit it Portland with the money Five Ways to Kill to any festival. he has saved up during Yourself (s h o r t). the previous two years. Pure Color (sh or t) 1987 and Fly Flame (s h o r t). He settles permanently Ken Death Gets out in Portland, where he of Jail (s h o r t). 1980 still lives. Following the setback 1988 of Alice in Hollywood Nightmare Typhoon Junior (s h o r t). he moves to New Jersey, (s h o r t). where he works in one of the clothing ware- 1984 houses of his father’s He records an album company. He continues with Burroughs, entitled Gus Van Sant Clown Josh Courtesy of the artist to write scripts, such The Elvis of Letters, (The Hansons series), as Corporate Vampire, for the label of his c. 1985 and to make 16mm films. friend Tim Kerr. Cinema Park Van Sant’s filmmaking is the light-sensitive plate of America’s postmodern era (post-pop, post-New Hollywood, post-militancy). He is a figurehead of indie films — which audiences discovered in 1989 with the release of Drugstore Cowboy — standing at the helm of an artistic freedom that irradiates from the margins. Without proclaiming a manifesto, every one of his sixteen feature films arouses astonishment and bewilderment due to the complex narrative structure and quirky rhythm. With a predominantly male slant (Phoenix, Reeves, Dillon, Damon, Affleck, Penn, Franco), violence and desire, melancholy and humour are never portrayed as opposites by Van Sant. His heterogeneous filmography compels us to rethink what comprises an auteur of cinema. Van Sant continuously covers his tracks, starting from scratch and embarking on a new cinematic dream with each film. Sometimes the dream consists of taking shelter in the studio, where hierarchy and rules protect his craftsmanship. At other times, the dream is a quest for unconditional freedom in ardently self-produced experimental films, culminating in his twenty-first century “Death Tetralogy” (Gerry, Elephant, Last Days and Paranoid Park, capped in 2011 by Restless), a series of radical formal experiments that gracefully and piercingly redefine American spaces. Desert, high school, forest and skatepark have never come across so poetically or so disturbingly. Van Sant is in sync with the pulse — whether real or unconscious — of his country: the America of outcasts, of media invasion and imperilled ecology, yet also the America that invented an irreverent and “on the road” way of being in the world. His films flirt with dreamscapes and psychedelia, while paradoxically conveying the Bruce Weber My Own Private Idaho Courtesy of Gus Van Sant deeply human chord of contemporary cinema. Van Sant series, for Interview is an ever-evolving artist. Magazine, 1991 1989 1990 I’m Seventeen Drugstore Cowboy: Fame 90 (m usic video) (music video) for Inspired by Jim Fogle’s for David Bowie: First Tommy Conwell.