Jan Manski’s Grotesquely Fascinating “Onania”

There’s a simul­ta­ne­ous hor­ror and fas­ci­na­tion that goes along with view­ing Jan Man­ski’s work, specif­i­cal­ly his series titled Ona­nia. In it, ten­ta­cles grow out of faces, and fleshy, putrid-look­ing skin is jux­ta­posed with a pow­dery pink, like the shade that Mary Kay ladies wear. Fig­ures are on dis­play, and mag­a­zines cov­ers with super­mod­els are muti­lat­ed and ruined. Man­s­ki has come up with a com­plex back sto­ry to accom­pa­ny his work, and it’s pret­ty bleak. Here’s a snip­pet from it:

Ona­nia hosts an alter­nate real­i­ty and fer­tile breed­ing ground for
mankind’s most despi­ca­ble mod­ern habits. Nar­cis­sism bred from
fran­tic con­sumer cul­ture is show­nat its most destruc­tive, with
Onania’s inhab­i­tants seek­ing its prime offer­ing — unadul­ter­at­ed and
unin­ter­rupt­ed plea­sure. Manski’s metic­u­lous and total atten­tion to
minute detail has borne a prod­uct encased in the method­olo­gies of
this emi­nent­ly invit­ing and hos­tile environment.

This series is part one of a tril­o­gy. Cur­rent­ly, he’s work­ing on Pos­s­esia and Eugeni­ca will be released in 2015.