Gordana Novakovic

Gordana Novakovic was born in 1950 in Belgrade. Graduated painting at the Belgrade Academy of Fine Arts. Her special interests are experimentation in the synthesis of traditional painting with new technologies and other art forms. Although primarily a painter, she also creates Computer Art, installations, video, performance, etc. She has held numerous one-person and group exhibitions. She has also exhibited her works at most of the prominent international festivals of Electronic Art.

Artist's statements :

ON ART

ON THE RELATIONSHIP OF
ART AND THE NEW TECHNOLOGIES

ON THE ARTISTIC METHOD

ON ART
That moment, when you face an empty canvas, or a sheet of paper, before you draw the first line, is dramatic, esoteric, beautiful, difficult. It is the moment when you must set forth, bring into alignment, and apply the entire spiritual and physical measure of your inner essence, when you must achieve the fullest concentration focused within you. The result is a specific state of mind and body in the process of creative work. Such a frame of mind, and my decision to deal with certain specific shapes, colors, compositions, seemed to be fortuitous, incomprehensible, and yet inevitable.
After a long period I have returned to the writings of Karl Gustav Jung. I found there for the most part, a satisfactory explanation for my method of work, as well as the theoretical framework for my artistic "credo." Now I begin to understand why my forms are egg-shaped, spherical, or snakelike, and that why is everything immersed into an atmosphere of water: of Sea. Those are all universal symbols: archetypes. Symbols of alchemy, Taoism, Christianity -- of universal Humanity.
I have also recognized my symbolism in the new contemplation of theoretical physics (quantum mechanics). And I know that I did not select these forms and compositions randomly and accidentally, in a moment of propensity, but that there are profound and complex subconscious reasons.
I believe that our genes compile not only our biological experience, which results in indescribably slow alterations, but that our spiritual sagacity also builds sediments in our genetic code. I believe that the center of the world truly exists in every human being, and that the duty of the artist - and everyone else- is to search for their own center of the world, by establishing the best possible communication with one's own mind and body. That quest is an artistic process. The articulation of of one's own forms into eternal symbols is a matter of personal creativity, imagination, and talent.

ON THE RELATIONSHIP OF ART AND THE NEW TECHNOLOGIES
The artist of today of course can not use the language of ancient forms. His contemporaries simply would not be able to understand him.
The synthesis of pictures and sounds in the new media has created a new glossary of symbols of artistic expression and has facilitated a more complex interaction with the entire soul.

ON THE ARTISTIC METHOD
The basic departure point in all my works is the endeavor to integrate my painting ability and experience with the new technologies.
Painted material is the basic tissue that makes up the different segments of the visual, regardless of the medium and technique in which the work will finally be done. The act of painting itself, in addition to the hand movements, also has a contemplative dimension of opening of subconscious thought processes.
The first level of communication is established with one's own soul. Then the team participants connect into a shared closed system through which the basic idea ripens in a process of generating the work through a circulation of processes of thought and feeling.
The next level of communication consists of an interaction of the environment and the viewer. In newer works, the viewer can influence the form - either visual, or sound.
This is one of the ways, thanks to the new media, to materialize the vibrations invoked in the viewer by a work of art. And: they can be incorporated as a new element and become an integral part of the already formed complex system in which another process is created, with its own, unique and always new values and changes.
The initial problem, with which I deal in all my works, is finding a way to transform the complexity of the visual into sound, and vice versa; to create a personal system of codes and modules, a system of a higher level of communication between the creator of the music and the creator of the visual -- the composer and the painter.
By synthesizing picture and sound, through the new media, we exert an exceptionally powerful influence on the entire being of the viewer/participant. We achieve a level of direct correlation between the artist's being and the viewer who becomes a creative element of feedback.
Conceiving the parameters of something that could rather be called an act than a work of art, the artist has initiated a process in which he is able to share the secret of creating with other people, in as yet the most straightforward way.

Form is an audio/visual category used by the authors to designate both the universally accepted concept of Form as well as Form as subject mater in the process of artistic creation.

C.G.Jung: Psychologie und alchemie, Walter Verlag AG Olten, chweiz, 1972.

C.G.Jung: Man and his symbols, 1964, Aldus Books LTD, London.