John Stezaker

Info: For the last four decades, John Stezaker has created manual photo-montages from vintage photographs, Hollywood film stills, postcards and other antique image material found at flea-markets and fairs. With surgical precision, Stezaker splices and superimposes images to create elegant juxtapositions and uncanny new scenes and personalities. Stezaker’s distinct work is an examination of the pictorial culture of mass media as it was emerging in the mid 1970s. In a contemporary context, it functions as a tracing of images in a pre-digital paper world; a crossing over between temporal realities. The compositions Stezaker creates are dream-like impossibilities that point to the multiplicity of meaning in images. Ambiguously seductive and disturbing, Stezaker’s works are charged with undeniable poignancy and wit. While his fascinating small-format collages bear the qualities of surrealism, Dada and found art, Stezaker was and remains an exemplary artist in his approach to dealing artistically with the world of images, inspiring many of the next generation’s visual artists. Location: Albertusstr. 9–11, 50667 Cologne.