Arek Jackowski

It wasn't only horrible, as growing up in a communist regime had its perks. Artists were promoted as social activists and the access to national museums, centuries old treasures, opera houses and theatre was essentially free. One could practically find an art object in everyone's home.

Arek Jackowski’s grandparents had one too. It was the most interesting painting that a young artist had been fixating on at every meal he shared with them at their tiny, modernist, Corbusier influenced apartment in Otwock, Poland.

As Arek Jackowski entered puberty, the painting had moved and inspired him. He got lost in dark and heavy strokes of a river rushing under a massive bridge. It defined the best years of Arek Jackowski’s young life; pine forests, Jean Michel Jarre's revolutionary music and an unparalleled friendship with Hubert Wojtasik. The golden banks and easy currents of Swider rushed through artist’s entire childhood and youth.

Those days, Arek Jackowski’s sketchbooks and pencils were alway present and essential. The copying pencils from Office Materials Factory in Pruszkow were the only media that Arek Jackowski had used back then and which marked every centimetre of his life.

In the early nineties, Arek Jackowski’s fam...