@John Stezaker. Double Shadow, 2021, collage, unframed: 10 1/4 x 8 1/4 inches. © John Stezaker, courtesy of the artist and Petzel, New York

Written by Sophie Mulgrew

Photo Edited by Billy Chen

John Stezaker’s current exhibition titled Double Shadow at Petzel Gallery is a stunning debut of the artist’s recent work that continues his lineage of reframing film stills and Hollywood publicity portraits through this own lens. These works are comprised of anonymous actors silhouettes shaped from extracted magazine pages that are layered to create a “doubling” effect against dark paper leaving the end result in a composition of “double shadows.” The subjects, albeit absent in detail, are present in the cast. These figures blend into each other, barely distinguishable from one another, causing the viewer to question the distinction between the primary figure and the shadow as both bodily forms become one.

@John Stezaker. Double Shadow, 2021, collage, unframed: 20 3/4 x 16 1/4 inches. © John Stezaker, courtesy of the artist and Petzel, New York

This series emerged while Stezaker was working on his Dark Star collages when two photographs overlapped on a dark background, developing an unforeseen image. The swift, improvisational quality of this arrangement was reminiscent of his interest in drawing and how it allowed him to reform silhouettes through superimpositions. The overall aesthetic of these works are shaped by Stezaker ‘s interest in cinema, each a uniquely crafted frame from the lives of stars. The silhouettes in “double shadow” are sophisticated and polished with his addition of black inlays that develop a dramatic quality in each image. Although the actors are excised from the frame, their performance remains. In one of the images, a seamless line creates the silhouette of a man leaning against a vintage car creating an illusion that he stepped out onto a set where the careful arrangement of light and show erase his figure from the scene. Within his outline, the profile of another figure extends a hand allowing the two negatives to collapse into gentle desert hills and a cloud-spotted sky. The saturated colors of the combined images enhance the stark shadows.

@ John Stezaker. Double Shadow, 2021, collage, unframed: 20 3/8 x 15 13/16 inches. © John Stezaker, courtesy of the artist and Petzel, New York

@ John Stezaker. Double Shadow, 2020, collage, unframed: 20 3/8 x 15 13/16 inches. © John Stezaker, courtesy of the artist and Petzel, New York

The modest scale of the work the compels the viewer to intimately engage with the scenes the shadows are living in. Stezaker challenges us to consider what makes a shadow: who is the person we are presented in photos and film, and who is the other– the shadow of a person– behind them? The work brings up questions of where the consciousness lies. By taking inspiration and visual cues from Alfred Hitchcock films, namely Rebecca and Vertigo, Stezeker requires us to consider the original visual langue of these images and the mastery film possess in fusing the past with the present. Each film exists in within their own timeline, much like the consciousnesses that lies deep within each of us. Rather than, illustrating the personal narrative between the individual and the scene, his leading protagonist is a universal anachronistic cognition.

Stezaker describes this series as “an underworld of images liberated from their ties to legibility”. Indeed, “Double Shadow” is a daring and innovative act of liberation as he lifts the figures trapped inside their stagnant settings and reveals the dark aura imprinted deep within their environments.