John Stezaker’s is a known British artist that re-examines the various relationships of photographic images. His simplistic images play with our fascination with the face, Stezaker’s subtle yet unsettling interventions toy with the subconscious and the surreal. Creating fine collages, Stezaker collects appropriate images found in books, magazines, and postcards combining them in one final image. The effect is pretty striking and shows how genius art can be in its most simple form. The artist’s tool is the scalpel and the process is to splice and compose. Through these elegant juxtapositions, Stezaker adopts the content and contexts of the original images, which convey his own meanings.

Stezaker’s ‘Marriage’ series, he focuses on the concept of portraiture. Using photographic images of classic film stars, Stezaker overlaps famous faces, creating hybrid ‘icons’ that detach the familiar to create sensations of the uncanny. Merging male and female identity into combined characters, such as landscapes etc, Stezaker points to a disjointed harmony, where the settlement of difference complements and detracts from the original image. Using stylistic images from Hollywood’s golden era, Stezaker abstractly engages with his interest in Surrealism. Placed in contemporary context, his portraits retain their aura of glamour, whilst operating as striking ‘artefacts’ of an outdated culture.


Reading:

John Stezaker-Artist Portfolio-Saatchi gallery
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/john_stezaker.htm