John Stezaker: Rubell Family Collection

by Mark Coetzee

Combing the aisles of flea markets, used-book stores and postcard vendors, London-based artist John Stezaker filters and selects images that have a strong sense of deja vu--Hollywood film stars of a bygone age, postcards of historical monuments, nature scenes and curiosities. Working with these faded images, he sets up compositions that seem to arbitrarily combine disparate components. Through these obstructions of action and recognition, Stezaker sets the viewer free to investigate the subconscious, the psychological, the philosophical--free from the actual. All of the work collected in this volume--published on the occasion of the artist's first solo exhibition at a public institution in the United States--is drawn exclusively from the internationally renowned Rubell Collection, Miami.

128 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2008

About the author

Mark Coetzee was a South African curator, author, and artist whose career spanned continents and institutions. After studying Fine Art at Stellenbosch University, he began his career as a painter and later founded the Mark Coetzee Fine Art Cabinet in Cape Town in the late 1990s. In 2001, he was appointed director of the Rubell Family Collection (now the Rubell Museum) in Miami, where he helped shape one of the most influential private collections of contemporary art.
In 2009, Coetzee joined Puma as program director of PumaVision and chief curator of Puma.Creative, working under Jochen Zeitz. This collaboration led to his appointment as founding executive director and chief curator of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art (Zeitz MOCAA), which opened in Cape Town in 2017 as a major platform for contemporary African art. He resigned from Zeitz MOCAA in 2018 amid allegations of misconduct.
Throughout his life, Coetzee remained active as a writer and art critic, contributing to publications including The Huffington Post, Mail & Guardian, Revue Noire, and Sunday Independent, and publishing monographs on various artists. He was remembered for his belief in the transformative power of art and his influence on the African and international art scenes.