On first glance, these chromatic collages from Anthony Gerace appear to be quite simple compositions but what they actually represent is hours and hours of trawling through vintage magazines such as Life, Playboy and Popular Mechanics cutting out negative space with matching (but not identical) tonal qualities.
Anthony states: "One of the things I wanted to do was show that each (piece) is unique not only in composition but also in tonality, and that to use the same source would still result in something different. I found two copies of the same magazine and made two collages, which manage to be quite different from one another while still being the same."
The series is called Fig. 1-99 and features 99 painstakingly assembled collages. This is probably the first time anyone has been made to take notice of the tonal negative space in a copy of Playboy.
Anthony Gerace lives and works in London. He has recently completed a thesis in graphic design at the OCADU, Toronto. He specialises in graphic design and photography split between commercial work and an art practice.
In the modern age of photoshopping and electronic cut and pasting, it's lovely to see something which is a real, tactile thing which has come from something tangible and which had to be destroyed in the making of it.
Visit Anthony's website.
Jessica Hazel is a writer, blogger and director of Smoking Gun Vintage.
