ARTZONE 461

TEL: 415.441.8680

NENAD KOSTIC

Project presented here consists of copies of frames from carefully selected scenes from three animated films that had a major impact on me few years ago: Ghost in the Shell, Princess Mononoke and Heavy Metal.

After numerous viewings of those movies (probably 40 times each), I was very inspired by them visually, philosophically and spiritually - by their stories, characters... But I didn't know how to react to those as an artist.

How to use the inspiration that I got from them for artistic creation. It took me some time and stress until I realized that the only way that I, as an artist, can respond to those masterpieces, was to copy them. Copy as a celebration, copy as a careful analysis. In the most traditional technique, oil on canvas.

The scenes that excited me the most were those "hidden ones", those that last one second or less, those may be difficult to notice but contain important meaning. To reverse the process of animation, animation as still designs that get to be alive by switching them at a rate of 24 per second.  Then finding those hidden moments and stop them again, reverse them into their birth state thus converting their time into eternal.  Subtleness of expressions and animation, philosophical breakthrough, and my enlightenment as well.  Discovering and realizing.  After this I started to watch those movies almost as a treasure hunter searching for hidden things.

In Princess Mononoke, 7 frames makes 1/3 of a second. I caught it and just knew that was the thing for me to paint.  In this case, the main character, a girl warrior, a human orphan raised by wolf semi-god is cutting her way out through an explosion in a mythical battle between animals and humans, where she is on the animals' side, thus protecting nature.

The other work, 6 frames from Heavy Metal, 80's classic masterpiece which consists of six stories based on six different comics from that time. Taarna, the girl depicted here is in front of a green ball of evil and in these six frames her inner state, which is expressed on her face, is changing from fear of death to offensive attitude, as a way to defend her life.

As I was completing the paintings, I realized that somehow subconsciously I have chosen movies (or they have chosen me) in which the main characters are girls in a period of major mind and body changes, and that all of my paintings are actually portraits.  Portraits as a classical art form.  One girl on the Buddhist middle path, and another one facing evil.  At all times I’ve tried to remove myself from what I was making, constantly oppressing the need for genuine creation of my own, not allowing myself as an artist any conscious intervention... And at the end, I arrived at these portraits that reflect so much of me.  The portraits of those three girls ( at ages of major body and mind changes) are at the bottom line self-portraits of myself.   Even my femine self...