By Sal Monetti

About the Art

“THE 17th CENTURY is a period I’m comfortable with” is what Kozak responds when asked how he arrives at his imagery. “Even when I re-think it, I’m spiritually compelled to put myself there. A lot of unresolved issues of craziness we are experiencing today began then. The works are not self-portraits per sae but on some level are parts of me.”

“I listen to music when creating. I see a gesture like a certain turn of the head and follow it through to its completion. I don’t fully understand the process but know that spirits with a strong nostalgia are there. They’re not negative but are kind of playful coming my way for a retelling of things past. Things about youthfulness and masquerades. An-drogyny for playful trickery. Youthfulness that has a unique charm...you can be any one that you want to be.”

“The 17th century was much freer than today. Now there’s a puritanical resurgence — panic and self-righteousness. Art is being questioned. Especially art with nudity...even the Madonna and Child! This disrespect for ones ancestors is very bad. It’s frightening and I don’t want to be singled out and go to prison for what I do but conversely how can you care when you have to struggle so much to pay rent, to eat, or to buy art supplies. I see that there are similarities to myself and other gay artists and that it makes me feel less unique but I also see myself as not being part of a group unless it’s a group of other non-group people.”

About the sexual content in his drawings he says, “There’s an aura of blasphemy in the work but I don’t want to get into it. Suffice it to say that the church didn’t do their job well. One of my friends is into the dungeon scene and I let myself go in that direction. I don’t have sides to myself but wear masks. You wear masks, they wear masks. It’s OK as long as you let them know that you’re wearing a mask. It’s a symbol of the nature of existence. Everything comes from something else.

Time Travel, Religion, Heaven & Hell

“THERE’S A MAGICAL quality about time travel. It’s me crying out so I won’t disappear (literally). That comes from living in the present time and is why I wear flowing garments and dance. Work is a meditation to drive away negative energy. I have all these responsibilities and no power. Incorporating God-like figures and powerful looking men into a scene gives me some idea of what it would be like. The penis is used as a symbol of power. It would be nice to be so powerful that you could live any way you wanted to. My art is all a complex process to pull myself up out of the negativity. Secrets of my heart will lock me out of their paradise but maybe there’s a paradise for outcasts. Jesus was an outcast. A lot of what we’re subject to comes from religion.”

About believing in an after life he said, “Boy, do I! I have proof. I was contacted by people [spirits], heard voices, saw things I can’t describe. They’re angelic. They’re about good in the truest sense of the word. As a kid I was raised Catholic and went to this beautiful little church. Nothing in it was high art but the flickering candles and painted ceilings were beautiful. I didn’t care who or what it was about, all I knew was that it was beautiful. I never heard anything negative about sexuality there. It was like walking in to a forest of a jewel. It made an impression on me. I’d like to create a church of Sodom.”

Looking to the Future

“I’M CURRENTLY WORKING on speculative fantasies in the court of Frederick The Great. Historians say he wasn’t homosexual but I find that hard to believe. He had a difficult childhood and took on the persona of what other people wanted him to be. Some part of me is like that. I’m also working on images that show Prussian military uniforms. I want to be thorough. There are other courts I can spend the rest of my life exploring. It will be interesting if I can maintain this energy. The problem is the world intrudes itself. I used to consider myself to be an anarchist. Now I consider myself to be a monarchist.”

In Closing

“WITH MY ART I’m not quite sure what I’m saying. When I create it’s not just for me. Things are channeled through me. I travel. Beauty is so essential. The apprehension of beauty is visceral. You can feel it in your bones. It can make you cry. They [the spirits] weren’t sad, they were amazed at what I did.”