Synopses & Reviews
Celebrated for his brilliant use of old film stills, portraits, postcards and other found imagery, John Stezaker engages with this exquisitely selected found material through inversion, excision, incision, fusion and accidental damage. In this extensive monograph/exhibition catalog, Stezaker focuses on the dialectics innate in the work; life and death, seeing and blindness, male and female, love and betrayal, portrait and landscape, and more. Included are works ranging from 1977 up to the most recent series from 2010, introducing lesser-known groups such as 'Sublimes' and 'Lost Tracks' alongside his famous ongoing series including 'Masks' and 'Marriages'. The largest monographic catalogue on Stezaker to date, the publication features texts by Dawn Ades and Michael Bracewell and a conversation between the artist and Daniel Herrmann and Christophe Gallois, with over 80 images of the artists' work.
Synopsis
Spanning more than three decades, this richly illustrated monograph demonstrates John Stezaker's engagement with the ceaseless flow of images resulting from mechanical reproduction, mass media and popular culture.
His intervention into these images through collage, excision, reconfiguration, inversion or occlusion can be seen to interrupt their everyday circulation in a profound way: image and perception alike are questioned, rearranged and opened to new possibilities. Through their transformation Stezaker's images acquire poetic resonance, and, in many cases, a disquieting allure.
With over 120 illustrations, this monograph presents the first overview of John Stezaker's work on paper from the 1970s onwards, featuring his found images, collages, image fragments and a selection from 'The 3rd Person Archive' series.
Essays by Dawn Ades and Michael Bracewell, as well as a conversation between the artist and curators Daniel F. Herrmann and Christophe Gallois, place Stezaker's work in a historical context and analyse his methodology.