Stezaker is a surreal master of juxtapositioning pop culture, romance, darkness and vintage Hollywood. Amy Lockwood was dazzled by his current show.

On entering this show, you feel the prickly gaze of hundreds of little eyes. The wall opposite draws you closer to inspect small portraits of forgotten movie stars from a bygone age of glamour. However, there is no place for nostalgia here as Stezaker’s interventions leaves the viewer reeling from the jolt of the new. The photographs have been sliced horizontally at the point of the eyes and then the two halves layered over an identical copy. This reveals kaleidoscopic faces which induces a giddy sensation of intoxicated vision over the viewer.  One image of a man is particularly horrific: A fat baldhead with repeated sets of his bulging eyes unveils a face that is abject and spider-like.

Stezaker uses found images of movie stills, postcards and illustrations which he alters and reassembles like a vandal to create works of art with new meaning. Images are cut and collaged in very subtle but deliberate gestures and each piece is carefully composed. Like a surgeon, he exercises his scalpel with precision and perfection. On close scrutiny one can see evidence of

Stezaker’s rejection of digital techniques for original materials and this obvious human contact is refreshing and further adds to the work. This is Stezaker’s first major exhibition, which catalogues his work from the 1970s to the present day. This substantial collection displays an artist who has remained loyal to his distinctive style, and the vast and differing results of his experimentations is fulfilling to consume as Stezaker reveals the endless possibilities in nuances of alternation.

Altogether this gives one is given the sense of a hoarder and an obsessive. Stezaker cuts out individual figures leaving a stark silhouette and an eerie feeling, he places white rectangles with exactness to mute part of a picture and images of train tracks and architecture are mirrored and inverted into abstract patterns. Other series includes tiny images cut neatly into four, like a jigsaw or a windowpane, movie scenes that have been ferociously torn and put back together to reveal something more sinister or orgy like.

He continues to abuse vintage starlets by cutting their faces in half and marrying them with others, producing a cast of freakish characters. One seems to have transformed into ‘The Laughing Man’. Stezaker’s ‘Mask’ series sees faces blocked by old scenic postcards, where through strange parallels of composition the two separate images fit together and produce new pictures with Dali-esque quality. A movie still of a man and women who could be about to kiss is blocked by an image of a gorge that sees their faces turned to stone and a river running between them. Our gaze is drawn into the distance between them, as though we are looking at a memory.

The images are relatively small, the standard 6x4 format of a vintage publicity portrait, or some are tiny segments of a photo to be scrutinised. They are carefully and immaculately preserved, isolated within thick white bordered frames, so that they are completely autonomous. The dissected hybrid images are presented as rare specimens, the mutant results of a mad scientist’s experiments.

Like graffiti, photomontage is a rebellious act but unlike his contemporaries (Peter Kennard springs to mind), Stezaker steers clear of political comment and purely explores the very nature of looking and we are encouraged to consciously think about the image. Stezaker exposes the lure and subversive nature of the found image. The juxtaposition of images, shapes and composition creates a poetry of images that is in part formulated by Stezaker and in part by the minds of viewer. His work also highlights the way in which modern media soaked society receives a body of images and dispersed ones at the same time thus creating a climate for images to become detached from meaning and transformed.

These found images are seemingly stooped in meaning and historical context. We do not know the stories behind the individual pictures but we feel safe in the knowledge that they exist. Yet these images are disembodied and culled of any preconceived identities as swiftly and easily as the slice of Stezaker’s scalpel. This sudden existential eradication and undermining of meaning fascinates and troubles us much in the same way that death does: We question the weight of meaning and are fearful of the prospect of nothing.

This feature was produced in association with Vauxhall Fashion Scout