John Steza­k­er
Col­lages

Acclaimed Lon­don-based artist John Steza­k­er (born 1949) is known for his pho­to­graph­ic col­lage works that draw on the artist’s immense archive of mid-twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry cin­e­ma mem­o­ra­bil­ia, agency head-shots, post­cards and pho­to­books. He has been influ­en­tial to a num­ber of devel­op­ments in art over the last three decades, from Con­cep­tu­al Art to Appro­pri­a­tion Art,through to there emer­gence of col­lage as a con­tem­po­rary process. A prac­tice built over sev­er­al decades, using found pho­tographs and print­ed mate­r­i­al, Stezaker’s col­lages involve var­i­ous inter­ven­tions such as exci­sions, mask­ings, cuts, rota­tions and visu­al con­cor­dances. Jux­ta­pos­ing dis­parate sources, his work cre­ates com­pelling new images by splic­ing togeth­er diverse visions, con­join­ing male and female faces along sharp diag­o­nal seams, or plac­ing scenic Roman­tic land­scape post­cards direct­ly over the expres­sions of unknown actors. Rem­nants of the film indus­try are used to revi­talise the pow­er of the sta­t­ic image, insist­ing on the dynamism of the sin­gle frame and of the silent picture.

Read in a time of post-lens imag­ing, Stezaker’s works recall Sur­re­al­ist tech­niques and the form of Mod­ern polit­i­cal satire; appear­ing first as relics from Hollywood’s gold­en era, not with­out some nos­tal­gia. How­ev­er these fab­ri­cat­ed por­traits of an obso­lete glam­our speak direct­ly to a con­tem­po­rary expe­ri­ence of sat­u­ra­tion, of frag­men­ta­tion and illegibility.

Of his Mar­riage series, Steza­k­er says: ​“I think of my col­lages as vio­la­tions, and there is a vio­lence, espe­cial­ly in my ear­li­er ones. That’s the big dif­fer­ence in my oeu­vre; the vio­la­tion of col­lage is more cen­tral in the ear­ly ones. In lat­er work I tend to see col­lage more as a kind of act of repa­ra­tion, bring­ing togeth­er, of heal­ing in a way, so heal­ing the divi­sions between male and female. And when I com­bine a male and a female, very often I feel as thought I’m cre­at­ing a kind of plau­si­ble per­sona rather than this blank per­sona of the film star. Strange­ly by com­bin­ing it with a sex­u­al oppo­site or with a dif­fer­ent being, you get a sense of some­thing slight­ly more human. So I guess it’s like the com­bi­na­tion, in Jun­gian terms, of ani­mus and ani­ma. You can read [the per­sona] in dif­fer­ent ways. Some­times I read it as a male with a female ani­ma, the female uncon­scious incor­po­rat­ed into the image. Some­times it’s the oth­er way around. Ide­al­ly there should be a bal­ance where it’s not a male being mit­i­gat­ed by a female side, or a female being mit­i­gat­ed by a male side, but there is actu­al­ly a com­plete bal­ance, an ambi­gu­i­ty, and that’s when it works best for me.”1

John Stezaker’s work has fea­tured in many group exhi­bi­tions, most recent­ly the 19^th Bien­nale of Syd­ney: ​‘You imag­ine what you desire’, curat­ed by Juliana Eng­berg and ​‘Ruin Lust’ at the Tate Britain in Lon­don. In ​‘The Age of Col­lage’, gestal­ten space, Berlin, Ger­many, ​‘L’Image papil­lon’, Musée d’Art Mod­erne Grand-Duc Jean, Lux­em­bourg and ​‘Crys­tal Maze IV- 1+ 2+ £ = 3’, as part of Nou­veau Fes­ti­val, The Cen­tre Pom­pi­dou, Paris all in 2013. His work was also part of ​‘Out of Focus’, Saatchi Gallery, Lon­don in 2012. Stezaker’s work fea­tured in ​‘Col­lage: The Unmon­u­men­tal Pic­ture’, New Muse­um, New York and Mar­t­ian Muse­um of Ter­res­tri­al Art, Bar­bi­can Art Gallery, Lon­don in 2008, as well as ​‘About Face’ at the Hay­ward Gallery, Lon­don in 2004.

Recent solo exhi­bi­tions include ​‘Cut&Paste: John Steza­k­er’, Cen­tre de la Pho­togra­phie Genève, Switzer­land and ​‘John Steza­k­er: One on One’, Tel Aviv Muse­um of Art, Israel in 2013. In 2012 Galerie Gisela Cap­tain, Cologne, Ger­many had a solo exhi­bi­tion of Stezaker’s work. The Whitechapel Gallery, Lon­don exhib­it­ed Stezaker’s work in 2011, a show which then toured to MUDAM, Lux­em­bourg, and Kem­per Art Muse­um, St. Louis, USA. In 2010 Kun­stvere­in Freiburg in Ger­many exhib­it­ed Lost Images and Tab­u­la Rasa was shown by ​‘The Approach’, Lon­don. In 2007 he had a solo show at the Open Eye Gallery, Liv­er­pool, UK and the Project Room, Yvon Lam­bert, Paris, France.

Stezaker’s work is part of many col­lec­tions includ­ing the Tate Col­lec­tion, London,UK and the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, New York, USA.

[1.] From an inter­view with Michael Fitzger­ald for Photofile