02 april 2021, Flor Linckens
John Stezaker: “It sometimes feels like I am cutting though flesh”
For a long time it seemed that John Stezaker's work would go undiscovered, at least during his lifetime. The now 72-year-old artist was still working as a teacher at the Royal College of Art in London fifteen years ago. His work was discovered in the mid-noughties, by important collectors like Charles Saatchi and has since been included in the collections of leading museums such as the Tate Modern and the MoMA. Stezaker: "At an age when most people are thinking of retirement, I suddenly find myself able for the first time to make a living exclusively from my art." His surreal collages are currently on show in Gallery Sofie van de Velde in Antwerp (until April 4).
John Stezaker, Marriage (Film Portrait Collage), 2020, Gallery Sofie Van de Velde.
But Stezaker has been active since the 1970s and as early as 2007, art critics concluded that his work had a major influence on that of the Young British Artists. Stezaker himself is inspired by writers like Kafka and artists such as Jasper Johns and Man Ray. The photo-novels of the 1970s were also an important source of inspiration for him, not in the least because the Situationists that he admired so much used them in their work. Stezaker is known for his unconventional collages, based on appropriated old photographs, film stills and postcards from the golden age of Hollywood. His silhouettes and split portraits are perhaps his most recognisable work. For example the "Marriage" series, for which he places two half portraits on top of each other, diagonally or vertically, often a man in combination with a woman. Yet he tries to make as few interventions as possible. Ultimately, a surreal but elegant portrait emerges in which Stezaker plays with notions on glamour, gender, identity and celebrity. And even after all these years, the British artist still feels a bit burdened to cut into a photo sometimes. Stezaker: "It sometimes feels like I am cutting though flesh.” As a viewer, you often experience a kind of disconnect when you look at his work. For example, he might places a postcard over the face of his character. Stezaker: “When we look at a face, we assume that we are looking behind the face for a personality. By making literal that behindness, I often create something that twists into an image of horror.” Stezaker is also fascinated by the ways in which images live on on the internet, in a visual culture in which context and the original maker are often lost.
John Stezaker, Double Shadow, Gallery Sofie Van de Velde.
His process has changed quite a bit in recent years. Stezaker: “In the past I would collect my source images from second hand bookshops and flea markets. The predominant cinematic material has long since been unavailable through these kinds of sources. In recent years I have been buying on-line. This has definitely changed my relationship with the process of finding and discovering. So in order to restore some of that excitement, I have been buying blind. When I discover a new commercial source, I ask if they have any unwanted material. These usually come under two categories: damaged or unknown. These render the images as worthless in collecting terms – if there is physical damage, or a portrait is of an unknown actor – but both of these criteria make the images exceptionally useful to me.” These anonymous, forgotten people are often referred to as "virgins" by cinema memorabilia collectors. It is precisely these people who fascinate Stezaker. “There is a certain melancholy attached to the faces of actors that did not make it and to images that were destined to disappear. I'm very drawn to that.”
John Stezaker, Untitled, 2012, Gallery Sofie Van de Velde.
