Putting a face to strangers

Gus Van Sant has become, arguably, the city’s most famous celebrity. The creator of 14 feature films including 2008’s Milk, Van Sant has built a reputation on telling everyday stories with just a hint of quirkiness, a dab of originality and a definitive Portland presence.

Fans of Van Sant should be pleased to know that their master of cinema is not monogamous with his art. Van Sant walks in the shoes of a filmmaker, an accomplished photographer, a collagist and a painter.     

PDX Contemporary Art will be hosting a rare appearance of Van Sant’s work in this month’s exhibit titled Cut-ups. During the casting process of Van Sant’s films, he takes photographs of the thousands of people who audition for roles. Needless to say, this collection of Polaroids has become extensive and is the basis behind his current project.

Using the casting photos, Van Sant has literally “cut up” the faces, bodies, clothing—you name it—and reassembled the images to match the fuzzy, foggy, and meshed up version of the people we see around us every day.

You don’t need to deal with thousands of people vying to be in one of your films to understand the point behind Van Sant’s work. We all experience the sort of reality presented in the photos—strangers walking past us, the girl on the bus, the boy riding his bike, faces, faces, faces. Eventually we become numb to these people. Seemingly, they are only figures within our own story.

With Van Sant’s images, we the viewer are left with a challenge. The layers upon layers of different photos leave you feeling a bit overwhelmed and not sure of which direction to go, whom to attach your eyes to or which set of eyes to engage.

The exhibit is being shown as an introduction to Van Sant’s larger body of work, which will be exhibited in Eugene beginning May 16 at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. Van Sant’s work will be shown in conjunction with rare Andy Warhol photos in a collaboration titled One Step Big Shot. The show will continue through Sept. 5.

Many of the photos are crafted to appear as if the images stacked on top of each other are of the same or similar-looking people. The point is not to create someone new but provide commentary on how faces blend and how we each create the images that we see.

Some of the photos have a single torso with multiple faces intermingling; others create more of a mess. The subjects come in all varieties: skinny, fat, handsome and ugly. Shirtless and clothed, men and women, these are the people we see and it’s up to us to notice them.