Collage made from vintage magazines
12.5 x 10 cm
Joachim Ballaux
Joachim Ballaux transforms found images, drawn from magazines, postcards, and old photographs, into collages where nature and the human figure keep dissolving into one another. Working in Brussels, he chases the unexpected encounters between fragments, coaxing familiar realities into something strange.
In the Words of the Artist
Collage made from vintage magazines
9 x 11.4 cm
My practice revolves around collecting, selecting, and transforming found images. I work mainly with vintage printed material such as magazines, books, postcards, and photographs. I'm interested in the unexpected encounters that emerge when unrelated images are brought together. Through collage, I explore themes of memory, nostalgia, coincidence, humor, and the subconscious, creating spaces where familiar realities become slightly strange and open to new interpretations. The relationship between nature and humanity is an important theme in my work and somehow finds its way into almost everything I create.
For me, collage is a way of spontaneous thinking as much as it is a technique. It is the art of creating meaning through relationships: placing fragments next to one another and allowing something unexpected to emerge between them. Collage embraces chance, contradiction, and ambiguity. It also has a strong social dimension. Through workshops and collective making, I've seen how collage can bring people together, encourage dialogue, and create connections across different experiences and backgrounds. It reminds me that nothing exists in isolation; every image carries histories, associations, and possibilities that can be transformed through context. At its core, collage is an act of discovery.
Collage made from vintage magazines with golden aquarelle ink
12 x 95 cm
It's impossible to grow up and work in Brussels without absorbing some of that Surrealist legacy. The idea that ordinary objects can become strange through juxtaposition is deeply embedded in Belgian visual culture. While I don't consciously try to continue that tradition, I recognize that many of the mechanisms I use- displacement, ambiguity, and unexpected encounters- have clear connections to Surrealism. At the same time, my work is perhaps less concerned with dreams and symbolism than with the hidden narratives already present in found imagery. Rather than working for or against that inheritance, I see my practice as participating in an ongoing conversation with it.
Usually, the process begins with the material itself. I spend a lot of time collecting and browsing images, and certain fragments immediately spark curiosity. Sometimes I start with a loose concept, but more often the work emerges through a dialogue with the material. One image suggests a possibility, another image responds to it, and gradually a composition begins to reveal itself. I try to remain open to surprise. The most interesting works often come from combinations I could never have planned.
Collage made from vintage magazines
15.7 x 12.5 cm
Collage made from vintage magazines
13.5 x 14 cm
I think it's important to preserve traces of the original image. Even when a fragment is transformed, I like the idea that its previous life remains present in some way. The tension between old and new is what gives collage much of its energy. If the source disappears completely, something is lost. I prefer works where viewers can sense that an image has traveled through time and context before arriving in its new form.
The age of the material is definitely important. Vintage print culture carries visual qualities that are difficult to find in contemporary imagery: particular color palettes, printing techniques, design languages, and cultural assumptions. These materials function almost like time capsules. Their age creates an immediate emotional resonance, inviting viewers to project memories, whether personal or collective. At the same time, they are simply wonderful raw materials - rich, tactile, and full of unexpected details waiting to be rediscovered.
Collage made from vintage magazines with golden aquarelle ink
31 x 21.5 cm
Collage made from vintage magazines
21 x 20 cm
About the Artist
Joachim Ballaux is a Belgian visual artist based in Brussels. Working primarily with analogue collage, found imagery, archives, and printed ephemera. His practice explores the poetic and uncanny potential hidden within existing images. By cutting, reassembling, and recontextualizing fragments of visual culture, he creates works that blur the boundaries between memory, fiction, and collective imagination. Since 2026, Ballaux has facilitated collage workshops, using collage as both an artistic medium and a tool for social connection, reflection, and storytelling.
For Your Viewing Pleasure
What to watch, read, and experience, as curated by the Collé team.
ENRICO NAGEL (b. 1987) is a German collage artist and illustrator from Berlin, currently based in Paris. As a self-taught artist, he specializes in collage art, creating mysterious and imaginative works by harmoniously combining thousands of images using both digital tools and traditional cut-and-paste techniques.
MICHAEL HENTZ is a New York-based artist and musician who utilizes pop culture and archival images to create mythical portraits and propose new architectural dimensions in the forms of collage and mixed media.
FEDERICO DI CHIARA is a Carrara photographer and chef who came to the camera late. Using long exposure and intentional camera movement, he blurs his city's architecture toward vanishing — solid buildings made provisional, permanence quietly undone.
ALISA GALITSYNA is a self-taught Ukrainian collage and mixed-media artist based in Barcelona. She draws on nature, textiles, and everyday materials, layering hand-painted and vintage papers with embroidery and thread into soft, earthy compositions that feel both modern and timeless.
LOUIE EDISON is an artist from London. After his studies, he would make art from his garage, which became increasingly limiting as his experimentation grew. He enrolled in a printmaking course at the Royal College of Art to learn as much as he could in a year, with all the tools, space and feedback he was craving.
Out and About
What to watch, read, and experience, as curated by the Collé team.
▼ READ
Camouflage collage: Jemima Wyman finds patterns in protest movements by Margot Osborne
A survey exhibition of the Palawa artist Jemima Wyman reflects upon the overlapping aesthetics of global activist movements, and the ‘power of anonymity’.
▼ READ
Children of the Revolution: The Transformative Power of the Past by Rob Strati
This is the second article in Children of the Revolution, an ongoing series about contemporary artists who draw on historical visual languages to contend with the contemporary world.
▼ LISTEN
Custodians of Human Succession by Kilynn Lunsford
This 2022 album is a haunting collage of post-punk, its restless compositions circle decay, memory, and survival with an unsettling surrealism.
