John Stezaker
05 Dec 2007 - 28 Nov 2008
JOHN STEZAKER
"Works from the Rubell Family Collection"
December 5, 2007 - November 28, 2008
This, John Stezaker’s first solo show in an American public institution, brings together 17 works that span 28 years of his production and illustrates the variable relation, over these many years, between ground image and insert image. Combing the aisles of flea markets, used-book stores, postcard vendors, etc., Stezaker’s anthropological search filters and selects images that often have a strong sense of déjà vu: Hollywood film stars of a bygone age, postcards of the top-of-the-pops of historical monuments, nature scenes and curiosities. Stezaker then takes these faded images and sets up a composition that often seems to be an arbitrary combination of two seemingly disparate components. Through his obstructions of both action and recognition, Stezaker’s strange, unsettling combinations of images sets us free to investigate the subconscious, the psychological, the philosophical; we are still, in may ways, the grandchildren of pop-psychology. All the work in this exhibition is drawn exclusively from the collection of the Rubell family.
"Works from the Rubell Family Collection"
December 5, 2007 - November 28, 2008
This, John Stezaker’s first solo show in an American public institution, brings together 17 works that span 28 years of his production and illustrates the variable relation, over these many years, between ground image and insert image. Combing the aisles of flea markets, used-book stores, postcard vendors, etc., Stezaker’s anthropological search filters and selects images that often have a strong sense of déjà vu: Hollywood film stars of a bygone age, postcards of the top-of-the-pops of historical monuments, nature scenes and curiosities. Stezaker then takes these faded images and sets up a composition that often seems to be an arbitrary combination of two seemingly disparate components. Through his obstructions of both action and recognition, Stezaker’s strange, unsettling combinations of images sets us free to investigate the subconscious, the psychological, the philosophical; we are still, in may ways, the grandchildren of pop-psychology. All the work in this exhibition is drawn exclusively from the collection of the Rubell family.