A natural visual wit, John Stezaker isn't merely collaging two photographs of disparate persons – he is unveiling to the viewer a preexisting and undiscovered presence through the careful manipulation of the most human of human impressions, the face. The notion of identity is intensely distorted in Stezaker’s ingeniously partitioned imagery. If a face is the stamp of the soul, then what happens when one’s most revealing features are wedged into another’s? A chaos of identity ensues and the familiar becomes immediately alien.
Thus, we find looking at us – in terribly uncomfortable grins and oddly flirtatious eyes – the unmixed yin and yang of otherwise typically glamorous visages. Stezaker excavates from the vintage headshots of Hollywood actors and actresses a grotesque retardation without altering a single feature. Behind this apparent effortlessness lies the unique vision of the artist, whose innate sense of cropping, composition and collage ushers in a highly aesthetic series of images amazingly shocking for how straightforward their assemblage is.
For further viewing, visit: http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/john_stezaker.htm
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