Since the 1970’s, John Stezaker has been at the forefront of Conceptual and New Image Art and a leading figure in the contemporary renaissance of collage. His formula of practice consists of a few salvaged images, re-arranging them and re-constructing them to reveal a striking juxtaposition. The latest exhibition on view at Richard Gray Gallery features new collage work from the British artist. Simply titled “John Stezaker” the show will run through October 24^th and marks the artist’s first venture with the gallery and exhibition in Chicago. The installation of eighteen works is an alluring survey of the artist’s recent experiments with collage. Vintage photographs, film stills, postcards and printed ephemera are the chosen materials for Stezaker’s craft. The perfectly spliced creations demonstrate his impressive discipline and mastery of collection and selection. Taken from many of the artist’s series, this body of work clearly illustrates the power of image and perception.

Confronted by photographic vestiges from a different era, entrance to the gallery feels as if you have transported back in time. At first glance, the series of formal portraits hang in the main gallery space seem ordinary, indicative of the 1940’s: a gentleman posing with his hand on his chin, a lady with a cigarette and a Hollywood starlet posing for a headshot. But a closer look reveals that the surgical compositions play on the idea of melding personality with persona. The impetus of this series, referred to as Marriages, are what Stezaker has described as a “fortuitous find” of some 4,000 plus photographs purchased for a very good price.

In many of these images, disparate portraits are assembled into one, schizophrenic hybrid. Stezaker divides his selected photographs into halves, and then methodically aligns the dis-jointed parts into glossy re-vamped head shots. The result is uncanny. Muse (Film Portrait Collage) V (2008, directly above), blurs the line between the masculine and feminine. Stezaker nods to the tension between sexes, but focuses on the beauty of his monstrous construction. Comical and eerie, these portraits are a mental exercise in reality and fantasy. The starlet or leading man no longer holds a specific identity. Stezaker’s painstaking attempts create a surrogate from the past; one that we can almost recognize, but is just out of memory’s reach.

A (2007, seen above) is a three-part collage consisting of separate photographs of female legs. Keeping with the traditional process of collage format, Stezaker re-invents the approach of cut-and-paste to obscure the familiar and suggest a different meaning. In this composition he disposes of the upper half of each picture, leaving the face and identity of each woman up to the imagination. Besides the obvious stance of all three models posed so their legs form the letter "A," the triptych touches on earlier works from Stezaker’s oeuvre featuring decapitated ladies. In a lecture the artist gave at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago on September 6^th, he gave some insight behind this approach: “I have several collections of beheaded figures… I became aware that this process of decapitation was a good way of interrupting the images legibility and became an accent – and a confrontation with the materiality of simulation.”

Obstruction of view is a motif seen in other works in the exhibition, Star I (2008, seen above) provokes the viewer to invent their own perception of the sitter in this occluded portrait. Here, Stezaker has places a blank, white starburst over the face of a gentleman seated for a formal portrait. This collage is a collision of art practice. Rene Magritte meets Yosuf Karsh as the artist draws on influences from mid-century surrealism and photography. In his lecture, Stezaker explained his attraction to the cut and the role it plays in his work, “The way that a cut or a wound creates a sense of the invisibility of surfaces interests me – the connection between the seam and the seamless. Imperfection somehow shows a point of entry into its perfection”.

The artist continues this practice with Excision I (2007, seen above), a still image from the 1946 film Somewhere in the Night (dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz). The male gaze is literally depicted by a spotlight cut-out that almost eliminates actress Nancy Gold’s entire face. Another film still shows a scene reminiscent of Christmas morning that is contrasted by a vintage postcard showing gatherers on holiday at the beach. The postcard is carefully positioned in the center of the still creating a disruptive intrusion in Untitled (Film Still Collage) XVI (2005, top right). In both of these works, the viewer is left to formulate their own narrative.

Cathedral I (2009, below) is the only work in the exhibition that is not a two-dimensional collage. Part of the artist’s Bridge series, the work is a collaged book sculpture inspired by Stezaker’s interest in Kafka and his collection of mid-century tourist books from Prague. The aptly titled series serves as a metaphor for the work itself as the disparate images “bridge” together to form a dreamy illusion. As with Marriages, things are not always as they appear.  With Cathedral I, Stezaker puts more emphasize on the bleakness of the castle atrium and fragility of the material, than the fantasy of the space.

Highly influenced by Pablo Picasso, Joseph Cornell and Dada, Stezaker is a pioneer of  his own medium. His work is a collage of context and content. In a digital world of virtual cut and paste it is refreshing to see that the practice of collage is still relevant and contemporary.

--Robyn Farrell Roulo

(Images and lecture notes courtesy of Richard Gray Gallery)