Four Corners (TV Fragments) II
Artist
John Stezaker
(British, born 1969)
Date1978
Mediumcollages of gelatin silver prints and cut papers on four sheets of black wove paper
Dimensionseach sheet: 23.8 × 34.1 cm (9 3/8 × 13 7/16 in.)
ClassificationsCollages / Assemblages
Credit LineEliza S. Paine Fund
Object number2018.69
DescriptionA set of four collages of gelatin silver prints and cut paper mounted on a black wove paper.Label TextJohn Stezaker works exclusively with found photographs. Though much of his imagery comes from film studios’ promotional materials, like head shots and advertising, the original context of the images is not his focus. Stezaker makes sense of the “momentous circulation of imagery” in the public domain by divorcing images from their broader context. Four Corners (TV Fragments) II features stills from various films including the 1946 Hollywood classic It’s a Wonderful Life. They appear to emerge from a partial film reel with adjacent blank frames where another still would be expected. In this way, Stezaker arrests the movement between successive frames, a definitive characteristic of “motion” pictures. “Living in a culture of images is also to live in a culture that is essentially divided, fragmented,” Stezaker says. “Everything is montage, we live within a montage, and to me that’s terrifying….I see collage as a way of trying to find some seams and fissure.”
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