Nevena Prijic

Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA

Artist statement

The works begin as drawings and material studies on transparent and translucent sheets of mylar, and other materials used as a substrate for composition-making. Layering these sheets, the artist composes scenes that harmonize their chaotic and discrete parts. Through photography, the sensuous qualities of the stacks’ dimensionality, shadows and edges, are captured, projected and enlarged onto canvas. Scaled-up lines, marks and forms, rendered in oil with studious precision, reveal new worlds teeming with strange life. What is left is energy, movement, light; the record of change itself. Through painting, Prijić seeks parallel worlds that mirror our own, where corporal bodies and galaxies entwine. Suspended between the analytic lens of a microscope and the persuant gaze of a telescope, she discovers images that appear to reveal the spectral conditions of creation. Atoms split, cells multiply, matter streaks across undulating magnetic fields, a billion tiny particles model an abstract space on the cusp of the real. “The airglow is a dusty greenish yellow. Beneath it in the gap between atmosphere and earth is a fuzz of neon which starts to stir. It ripples, spills, it’s smoke that pours across the face of the planet; the ice is green, the underside of the spacecraft an alien pall. The light gains edges and limbs; folds and opens. Strains against the inside of the atmosphere, writhes and flexes. Sends up plumes. Fluoresces and brightens. Detonates then in towers of light....

Artwork