In Jake Dombroski's collages, discarded products are juxtaposed against natural backdrops, highlighting consumerism's impact on the environment. A Hennessy label in a desert, a Coca-Cola can among sunflowers, a crumbled pack of Newport cigarettes over suburban homes, and an iPhone against a fiery terrain prompt reflection on our ecological footprint. Dombroski's art questions the sustainability of our 21st-century consumer habits.
My work is centered around collage, assemblage, and painting, through which I explore the intersection of Dadaism and commercialism. I am fascinated by the ways in which commercialism permeates every aspect of modern life, and I seek to comment on this through my work, often with irony and irreverence.
Working as a professional in creative advertising, I exist in a never-ending cycle creating contemporary work to push a specific product by day, only to come home and reassemble vintage ads at night. Just as I am finding new meaning in the work through the recontextualizing of images, I am finding new meaning within myself.
I tend to work in series with their own specific themes; the last one I produced was called Legacy. Legacy explores the cycle of life and the traces that we leave behind as human beings. This body of work is about the remnants of our existence — the discarded materials that often outlast us, and how they were born from and return to the natural world. Every discarded piece of refuse has such a long life — from its production in some manufacturing warehouse across the seas, to the overflowing shelves of a convenience store, to the mouths of a consumer, and finally to the gutter. However, the pieces of garbage that are affixed to the landscapes in Legacy are memorialized.
I'm in love with imagery from the late 30s to early 70s. I find that the print processes then offer a particular aesthetic that I try to embody. In the Legacy series particularly, I was acquiring found objects for months before pairing them with the perfect landscapes.
Jake Dombroski was born in 1993 in New Jersey and is currently based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
For Your Viewing Pleasure
Kensuke Koike (b.1980, Japan) creates unique artwork by manipulating found, vintage, photographic material. Kensuke’s approach revolves around the idea of using the assets found within an image to create a contemporary visual with a new narrative. The process for the artist often starts as a puzzle begging to be solved with each image setting its own unique challenges.
Katrien de Blauwer was born in the small provincial town of Ronse (Belgium). After a troubled childhood, She moved to Ghent at a young age to study painting. Later she attended the Royal Academy in Antwerp to study fashion. A study she abandoned. It was at that time she made her first collage books, actually studies and moodbooks for fashion collections. At a later age she began collecting, cutting and recycling images as therapeutic self investigation.
Ken Graves' collages reveal the wit and precision of his mind and hands. Rearranging found photographs from early to mid-twentieth century American magazines and inserting a range of materials, Graves creates surreal images that open a world of interpretive narratives. His collages reconfigure the material of popular culture, unveiling the social undercurrent embedded in commercial imagery.
Eric Gilkey, with a BFA in Graphic Design from Virginia Commonwealth University, is a seasoned Senior Designer at Nike, previously contributing at Need Supply Co. and Human Being Journal. His work showcases a refined blend of aesthetics and brand storytelling. Gilkey is known for his impactful designs that resonate across the industry.
The Club Lettera vision is the brainchild of Robert Aloe. Each work is an open letter reflecting concepts strictly of found items. The envelope is the root of all delivery of these messages and is consistent in each work. The envelope also is not seen as a piece of trash in most cases, but the messenger of this open letter to the viewer. The theme is usually derived by specific musical track and occasionally contain lyrics from those songs.
Out and About
What to watch, read, and experience, as curated by the Collé team.
READ
Aleksandra Kasuba’s Spaces for Senses - Mousse
Inesa Brašiškė pens an essay on the work of Lithuanian-born sculptor Aleksandra Kasuba (1923–2019) who believed in an interdependency between the spaces we inhabit and the way we feel, and who sought to find strategies for an alternative sensorial activation of the subject.
PARTICIPATE
Februllage
Februllage is a collaboration between Edinburgh Collage Collective and the Scandinavian Collage Museum. This is an initiative which invites collage artists to make a ‘collage a day’ throughout the month of February.
LISTEN
Cloudward by Mary Halvorson
Mary Halvorson, a versatile guitarist, ensemble leader, and composer, transcends conventional musical boundaries. Her unique instrumental style and evolving aesthetic blend deep jazz roots with experimental rock and folk, showcasing a broad spectrum of stylistic influences in her work.