author: Anna Rudek-Śmiechowska Phd
Pink chewing gum, a dollar-decorated
plate, comic-inspired thought bubbles, fragments
of lyrics byworld-class music stars, white
marbles, greenish browns, Greek profiles of
mythically divine faces, precisely carved letters…
This way, sculptor Michał Jackowski conducts
a simultaneous dialogue with the past and
the present and his elements of mass culture
wonderfully profane the ancient art.
Michał Jackowski’s art emerges on two pillars–ancient and pop arts. As the artist himself admits, combining seasoned and currently ruling
symbols is a way to engage in a dialogue. It resembles a strong binder, which allows for the
creation of the new, based on solid foundations.
The construction does not just happen in the technical sphere, but also the semantic one.
In this narrative, inspirations are easy to find, be they ancient and classical or contemporary,
pop-art, American. They become an intelligent tool to disseminate art and shorten the distance
between the viewer and the work. As a result, complicated and tricky subjects are treated using an understandable language. Timeless and complex human nature intertwines with such concepts as mass production and vulgarity.
This type of approach forms a certain testament to Marcel Duchamp, who first desecrated the classics and popularized mass-
produced, everyday objects in art, introducing the urinal and the bottle dryer into the world of high art.
The new culture originating in the
United States has given artists the freedom to create and use everyday life as an additional element in broader discussions. This is how daily, understandable, and necessary objects become art, thus growing into a perfect shard of divinity.
Michał Jackowski reaches for relevant elements of pop art. He borrows the thought bubbles from Roy Lichtenstein’s comic book
strips, which the characters use to engage in a dialogue or express their thoughts. In Jackowski’s work, they are a combination of
the real and the imagined, the coveted and the owned–a comic shortcut that builds a deeper
meaning, the message behind the sculpture. The same goes for the use of such symbols as money
(like lettuce lying on a plate) or a hamburger (bread turned into a human head.)
Such references to consumption, mass production, and everyday life place the sculptor among American artists. One can recall Claes
Oldenburg (e.g. “Giant Hamburger,” 1962,) who referred to pop art masters and their symbolism,
arising in connection with popular food brands, to quote just one example. The triviality of everyday
life is used as a tool to think, introduce changes, evaluate reality, and generate desires.
The “Supermarket Shopper” (1970) by Duane Hanson is a life-size polyester figure of a woman with a supermarket cart filled to the brim. Her hair rollers are covered with a pink handkerchief, she has a cigarette in her mouth, is wearing
a short navy blue skirt, and has a yellow beaded matinee necklace on. Through its realism and symbolism shines a show of everyday life in
its natural size, where excessive consumerism hidden in the form of groceries becomes a pretext to consider excess, artificial needs, the
world of mass production, brutal temporality. An exaggerated frame from life serves as a pretext to
spur discussion on human beings and their needs.
Michał Jackowski also conducts such discussions. As he himself admits: “I take ancient motifs to go further, to ask about today and
tomorrow. […] I juxtapose antique leads with brand-new pop art, like a journalist who searches for traces, asking impatiently: Where to now?
Who do you want to be tomorrow?” (Giuseppe Pucci, “Il Manifesto,” September 13, 2020.)
