About

I am a current student at University of East London, studying Graphic Design and Printmaking. Art has been my passion ever since I discovered a pencil. I can’t place myself to a specific genre but if I absolutely had to it would be somewhere in between Graphic Design and Illustration. As a young artist I am still trying to define my style of work, so far I would describe it as accurate and delicate. I like to take great care of each piece and make sure it is produced to high quality or else it is not worth exposing to the world, I am definitely a perfectionist when it comes to my own work. Living in digital age it is hard to ignore all the amazing software, however I believe that handmade pieces are so much more valuable and precious compared to digital. It takes great determination to producing a handmade piece, making unintentional mistakes part of the work often leads to uniqueness, such work cannot be re produced which makes it very admirable. I guess I try to re bell against all the brand new techniques on purpose, because I like spending time on solving problems that could be corrected in no time on computer software. I get my inspiration from quite literally everywhere

Monday

John Stezaker

I have recently visited a single artist exhibition of John Stezaker at the Whitechapel Gallery. This artist composes collages by mainly using film stills combined with vintage postcards, the work is simply constructed but comes across very complex to the viewers eye. I myself was inspecting some of the pieces for at least few minutes, as the artist managed to combined two different images into one without any visible lines of collage. It felt like an optical illusion of the space and angles within a photograph. All the imagery used in Stezaker's work is recognizable from our every day lives and the viewer is there to observe and absorb the fascinating mix of old photographs and modern art work.
Looking at the individual series, the Untitled pieces of various film star images have been cut diagonally in half and carefully balanced together to create a distorted portrait. I thought this particular series is one of the most successful works. I think he was trying to show the public how simple it can be to make something beautiful ugly and distorted, the actresses back in them days were flawless and no one ever thought to imagine them looking this way. Another great series would be Mask, where he again uses film stills only this time placing postcards of very impressive nature imagery on top of the portrait. I see it as a comparison of beauty, a subliminal message of natural beauty within a woman. Not forgetting to mention the the precious worn out colours that vintage postcards hold, it really adds character to these works. I may be wrong about the message behind Stezaker's work, but that is how I have interpreted it after seeing the exhibition.
Over all this was a great exhibition to start my academic year with, it might be one of the best exhibitions i have been to in some time. Collaging is something I like to do myself and I have picked up a great deal of inspiration from John Stezaker's work, especially the photography part of it!

Mask XXXV 2007 (collage)
Untitled XX  2007 (Film Portrait Collage)

Posted by Julia Baranova at 7:43 AM