What’s that rock doing in your face? Don’t miss John Stezaker’s first solo show in Belgium

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When writing interviews for the newspaper I work for, I always put a lot of effort in trying to make it look as if the writing was done effortless. I go over it again and again until the article looks real easy. Is that why I like the collages of British artist John Stezaker so much? I do imagine that the same applies to him. The end result looks like there was no other possible solution for this particular problem. As if it just had to be like this. Easy. But I imagine him, sitting there, sifting through his boxes, again and again, before he finds two old pictures that really match, in the way he wants them to match. Stezaker – a former tutor at London’s College Of Art, and a fan of the godfather of this blog Joseph Cornell – has been doing this since the seventies, but his work has only recently been (re)discovered. He was awarded the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2012. For the first time a small selection of his collages (and a couple of his ‘found objects’: discarded hands of display mannequins) is on view at a Belgian gallery. Touch is set up by London gallery The Approach at the beautiful gallery space owned by New York art fair Independent (Rue De La Régence/Regentschapsstraat 67, Brussels; through October 24). Must-see. (all images: courtesy the artist and The Approach, London)