Still Image Turin exhibition
07/10/2026 – 07/02/2027
Produced by Ares in collaboration with the Royal Museums of Turin, the exhibition presents the photographic work of American actress and photographer Jessica Lange (Cloquet, Minnesota, USA, April 20, 1949) and brings largely unseen works to Italy for the first time. Through a selection of over 200 images, the exhibition traces nearly thirty years of photographic exploration, revealing the artist’s intense, poetic, and deeply human perspective.
The exhibition unfolds across eight thematic sections, most of them previously unseen, focusing particularly on photographs taken from the late 1990s onwards, in which artistic sensibility and a documentary eye reveal a profound, melancholic perspective on the contemporary world.
– At the heart of the exhibition lies the series dedicated to Highway 61, the famous road traversing the United States from north to south, stretching from Minnesota, the artist’s birthplace, to New Orleans. In these black-and-white images, marked by pronounced grain and strong contrasts, Lange constructs a narrative of rural America defined by silence, suspended atmospheres, and details rich in meaning.
– Alongside this core body of work, other series expand the artist’s geographical and imaginative scope, such as the photographs in the “Mexico” section, particularly those captured during the Day of the Dead celebrations in San Miguel de Allende. Here, Jessica Lange moves without a specific objective, guided by intuition and her experience of the world. Her gaze favors solitude, a certain distance from others, and a discreet, almost invisible, presence that observes and contemplates rather than intervenes. In her photographs, time is not interrupted but expanded; it unfolds slowly, following the light, the pace, and the act of waiting. It is above all at twilight and during the night that Mexico takes shape: shadows, bodies, dances, folk music, encounters, and gestures come alive in an intense, sensual dimension.
– Next come the urban shots of *Dérive*, taken in New York during the Covid-19 pandemic (2020–2021), and the *Freak Show* series, created during the filming of *American Horror Story*, which reveals an interest in the world of the circus and its eccentric, marginalized figures.
– Among the three entirely new sections, *Gesti* (Gestures) gathers an inventory of gestures and bodily expressions, subtle yet significant, capable of suggesting the beginning of a story all on their own. At the poetic heart of the series lies the extraordinary communicative power of the hand, an element that clearly alludes to Jessica Lange’s profession as an actress and seems to have deeply inspired her artistic vision.
– *Paesaggi* (Landscapes) consists of images created using photocalcography, depicting abandoned settings in the American South; their silent desolation conveys an atmosphere, akin to a state of mind, and a psychological and aesthetic narrative that connects to the American landscape tradition, particularly the work of Ansel Adams and Alfred Stieglitz.
– Similarly, *Presenze del passato* (Presences of the Past) brings together photographs Lange dedicated to sites marked by major human or natural catastrophes, places where traces linger, suspended in space like invisible presences from the past still hovering amidst the remnants of tragedy.
– The exhibition concludes with *Mondo* (World), a collection of shots taken everywhere from Russia to California and from Scandinavia to Italy; these images document times and places where Jessica Lange simply photographs “what she sees,” casting a poetic eye on the everyday. Her language, classic and deliberate, combines composition, patience, and sensitivity, creating images with a cinematic, timeless quality.
📍LOCATION: Royal Museum Turin, Chiablese rooms
🕔 OPENING HOURS:
– Monday: 10:00 – 19:00 (last entry 18:00)
– Tuesday: 10:00 – 19:00 (last entry 18:00)
– Wednesday: CLOSE
– Thursday: 10:00 – 19:00 (last entry 18:00)
– Friday: 10:00 – 19:00 (last entry 18:00)
– Saturday: 10:00 – 19:00 (last entry 18:00)
– Sunday: 10:00 – 19:00 (last entry 18:00)
🎟️ TICKETS: You can buy your tickets here!
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