Same Same but Another Millennium
2000
Comic series in Flash Art International Magazine
This specially drafted comic series for Flash Art International magazine ran over four-pages in seven consecutive issues. Before Dan Brown, Navin Rawanchaikul lays claim to his Na Vinci Code, the story of which starts at the Louvre on millennium night, with the surface of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa cracking up. Behind the cracks Flash Art publisher Giacarlo Politi and his family find Asian paint pigment with art experts Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Hou Hanru asked to take the painting to show Navin in Thailand. Navin shows it to his art professor friend, meanwhile the painting cracks further to reveal a taxi sign hiding in the landscaped background. Navin, an artist-cum-tuk-tuk driver, travels back in time with the visitng art experts to 15th century Florence, to meet the young Leonardo. Struggling among his peers and competing against other artists, Leonardo wants to paint Mona Lisa but she isn’t interested, so Navin and his gang have to persuade her. Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst and other art celebrities also appears in Florence to criticise Leonardo’s work. Romance blossoms between Navin and the Mona Lisa and she finally agrees to be painted with Navin supplying paints to Leonardo that he has kept in the back of his tuk-tuk. Navin confesses his love for Mona Lisa, but her family doesn’t understand Navin or his tuk-tuk contraption, yet the vehicle does help inspire Leonardo to draw his flying machines. A rejected Navin leaves his tuk-tuk in Florence and is transported back to the present, but lovesick Mona Lisa asks Leonardo to paint the tuk-tuk into the background of her portrait as a memory to her lost love. Later Mona Lisa’s family order another artist to paint over the background tuk-tuk, which is why no-one has ever seen it until now.
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