Paper, 4 x 5 in.
Zak Jensen
Zak Jensen layers plastic over found paper with a disarming simplicity, making intimate assemblages that read as one-liners; minimal, poetic, and quietly funny all at once. Memories of the 1980s play back as if from some lost VHS tape.
In the Words of the Artist
Paper, 7 x 9.5 in.
I like collage for the process—spreading out physical collections, looking and thinking, exploring different arrangements and combinations—and for the way it enables immediate juxtapositions.
Collage is all process; exploration and play in physical space. It leads to discoveries that wouldn’t happen in other ways of working.
With regard to materials and formats, my work is kind of all over the place. However, I think it’s all driven by an experience of being in the world with a nagging need to make sense of it and no fully convincing explanations to be found. I want to understand, but I also want to embrace absurdity.
Three things that are integral to my practice across media are observation, collection, and recontextualization. In the last five years or so, my work has taken the form of collages, videos, photographs, screenprints, artist books and editions, banners, drawings, sculptures, and a screensaver.
Paper, 6 x 7.5 in.
I think there’s a general, continuing attention to lived experience and how it’s mediated through words and images. I’m also thinking a lot about the concept of “wilderness” and the perceived nature-culture dichotomy.
I’m the most motivated and productive when I have a lot of time to walk in the mountains or stare out windows.
I’m generally curious about how language attempts—and so often fails— to represent things, describe objects and experiences. This specific piece, “Photographs of people,” is also partly an inside joke about something that has been pointed out to me numerous times; I rarely portray people.
Paper, 5.5 x 6 in.
Paper and plastic, 5.5 x 6 in.
From the work of various Fluxus artists (George Maciunas, Nam June Paik, Alison Knowles, Ben Vautier, Yoko Ono and others), I learned many things. Perhaps the most important is that art isn’t in objects but the experiences they create (a concept they no doubt inherited from and interpreted after Duchamp).
With that in mind, some pressure might be taken off the materiality of art. It could be made of anything. Art can be cheap… or free! Artists like Micah Lexier, Yuji Agematsu, B. Wurtz, and Mark Dion showed me that I was not just un-alone in my fascination with collecting trash but actually in very good company.
Paul Elliman and Shannon Ebner—in addition to other artists and so many DJ’s—showed me the symbolic and aesthetic potential of found language. Speaking of language… Kay Rosen, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, and Lawrence Weiner! Ed Ruscha!
Paper, 3.5 x 3.75 in.
Paper and plastic, 6.5 x 8.15 in.
About the Artist
Zak Jensen is an artist, designer, and teacher working on things like visual identities, books, websites, exhibitions, editions, talks, and educational prompts. He attended the University of Utah, earning a BFA, and Yale University, where he earned an MFA. Until 2022, Zak led the Harvard Art Museums’ graphic design department. Before that, he worked as a designer in various contexts on branding and publishing projects. After many years living in different places around the U.S., he returned to Salt Lake City, where he now teaches at his alma mater. In 2025, Zak was awarded a Utah Artist Fellowship by the Utah Division of Arts and Museums.
For Your Viewing Pleasure
What to watch, read, and experience, as curated by the Collé team.
JOLO SALVADOR is a self-taught graphic designer and visual artist based in Cainta, Philippines. Known for his eclectic, multidisciplinary work, he seamlessly blends graphic design with contemporary and abstract collage.
JOANNA PIOTROWSKA is a London-based Polish artist known for her black-and-white photography, film, and performance installations. Her work explores the intersections of human relationships, domestic space, power dynamics, and psychological control by staging deliberate, performative actions within the home.
KATE CUTHBERT is a South Australian analogue collage artist working as satin&tat. Scissors. Paper. Negative space. The pieces are built from found imagery, mostly fashion, reassembled into something quieter.
PAULO WHITAKER'S work has made a unique contribution to the Brazilian art scene through a markedly dynamic process of experimentation since the 1980s. Among several exhibitions, he participated in the 25th edition of the São Paulo International Biennial, in 2002.
RICARDO TOMÁS is an illustrator and designer originally from Alicante, Spain and currently living and working in Sweden. His editorial illustrations have been published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Politico Europe, The Financial Times and Wired among others.
Out and About
What to watch, read, and experience, as curated by the Collé team.
▼ READ
Szilveszter Makó Wants to Be in Control by Chiara Bardelli Nonino
With his distinct theatricality and closely guarded process, the photographer conjures his own private world. It’s become a public obsession.
▼ WATCH
David Hockney: The Art of Seeing - A Culture Show Special BBC
Andrew Marr interviews Hockney about his exhibition A Bigger Picture at the Royal Academy, made up of works depicting the landscape of his native Yorkshire. Hockney died on 11 June 2026 at the age of 88.
▼ LISTEN
Hydroplane by Hydroplane
This Aussie trio from the '90s makes dreamy, hazy music. It's soft, ghostly vocals float over fuzzy guitars, crackly drum loops, and weird synth sounds. Its quiet and a little mysterious, like a fuzzy memory. Perfect late night, lights low, headphones on listening. Calm but strange.
