CARTES POSTALES: Jan Dziackowski

Perhaps best known as a painter and photographer, a significant part of Jan Dziaczkowski's practise centred around collage. Born in Warsaw, Poland in 1983, Jan started creating decoupage compositions from magazines from a very early age, working alongside his father. From then on he systematically collected clippings and photographs, creating a vast pictorial repository. Jan made the collages in a traditional manner, using scissors, razor blades and glue, working mostly in small format, usually the size of a postcard. These works demonstrate the extraordinary craftsmanship involved in "assemblage” and the great technical precision it requires. 

 

The unique hand made postcard collages in this series combine Japanese 'Carte Postale' with selected elements from Jan's collection of vintage magazines and books. These Japanese landscapes and scenes act as an idyllic base upon which Jan playfully disrupts the images with 'monsters' from movies: giant octopuses, bears, creatures of origami, King Kong, purple dinosaurs, often magnified to gigantic proportions. The juxtapositions he creates are hilarious, frightening and occasionally  disturbing.

 

Jan Dziackowski exhibited extensively throughout Poland but sadly his promising career ended tragically when he died in the Tatras mountains in 2011.