"Swiss Visa (Green)" Painting

I was born in 1973. in Belgrade. As my youth and artistic development were marked by disintegration of Yugoslavia, my native country, and by total decline and devastation of society I lived in, my artwork followed such mindset. Hence the themes and motives such as Clara Schumann from the German banknote which used to be an unofficial currency in the Balkans during the ’90s, and Visas, the actual travelling documents I collected from my friends’ passports which represent inability or a heavy difficulty for the people of this region to travel freely until just recently. Both Visas and Clara Schumann series along with the current artworks from the Hologram series, are treated as if they were some modern still life paintings, that is, as some painter from another era should treat classical pictorial problems such as light, color, drawing or composition, using, for example, jugs, fruits or draperies instead of contemporary objects that I use for exploring similar problems. Meticulous, repetitive, slow and contemplative method of painting these paintings stand in deliberate opposition to speed and superficiality enabled by technology in the contemporary world. Therefore, I don’t use any help from that technology, I simply observe and imitate what I see using my time as the most valuable resource.