Sebastien by Kolja Tatic

   Kolja Tatic is a talented Serbian painter and sculptor who stands at the threshold of the newest age in collectable fine art: the digital age.

  Tatic's digitally created images are like doorways into another dimension of reality, - a dimension of timeless serenity and order into which one can escape, briefly, to take a break from the stresses of the real world. To enter this imaginary dimension one has only to relax and contemplate one of Kolja Tatic's digital images. The experience can be relaxing and restorative. But along with feelings of peace and serenity, the viewer soon becomes aware of a growing sense of loneliness and desolation. In Tatic's digital images there is little evidence of human warmth. The only people one sees are shadowy hooded figures with hidden faces, who seem to be some sort of silent, mystical priests or overseers of his imaginary world. Perhaps they symbolize the emotional detachment of being in a meditative state, and the feeling of loneliness is the

viewer's cue to return to the real world, where madness and disorder may seem to prevail, but at least there is the company of other humans to make it all worthwhile. When the viewer does step back into reality, he or she will hopefully experience a feeling of peace and renewal.

Artists like Kolja Tatic raise an interesting question about the future and the place of digital images, in the world of collectable art.  Although it is now over 25 years since the effective birth of digital art, it is only in the last decade or so that it has begun to approach acceptability as a "serious" genre that merits being collected and exhibited in galleries and museums like any other kind of art.

   In the past, prints were valued only if they were executed by the artist's own hands, with the possible help of an assistant. Today such works are called "original prints", and while many art lovers and

collectors still insist on this standard of authenticity, there is a growing opinion that the true artistic value of any reproduced image lies in the image itself, and not in the method of reproduction, or the artist's direct participation therein. The image after all, is what the artist envisioned and laboured to create, and it is the image that holds the content and meaning that the he or she intended to convey.

  The "Original print" concept effectively limits prints to the traditional methods of art reproduction; serigraphy (screen printing), wood block and linocut printing, hand lithography and intaglio. These time-honoured methods have been used for centuries, but frankly, they were used because nothing else was available, and the range of artistic expression they support is quite limited, compared to digital art.

Today, Giclées and other types of high quality digital repro-                                  continue>>>