Collection Spotlight: Duality
TLDR: Life is a complicated game. Every decision you make can set you on a different path, leaving you with the reality of the world that you’ve created and the untold reality of what the world would look like had you chosen differently. There are always two sides to every story. This is Duality.
Collection Site: https://joepegs.com/collections/duality
Twitter: https://twitter.com/aliergin_art
Life is like a game of chess.
You begin with a blank slate. A world of possibilities. An abundance of choices for how YOU want to play the game.
By the guidance of those who have played this game before, you’ll likely play one of the classic openings, the standard childhood play, but you’ll quickly realize that once the game is afoot… things get complicated fast. You can only follow the patterns of others for a short time before you have to start making the big decisions yourself. It quickly becomes a game in your mind just as much it is a game on the chessboard. The configuration of pieces laid out on the board represent the moves you’ve made in your past. Each being an important part of the path that lead you to the situation you find yourself in now. Now this is your reality.
You’ll likely find yourself second-guessing some of your past decisions as you go along. What if I had played that move differently? What if I took a different approach to the game entirely? Could I have played better? Would I be better off right now if I did? While you struggle to find an answer to those thoughts, you simultaneously will still have more decisions to look out for ahead.
You will always be on the search for the right path forward while never getting confirmation that your decisions were right. You’ll weigh the possible outcomes of each potential move without actually knowing how any of them will play out. Each move you play comes at the cost of not making another. The path between you and your end goal is separated by an ocean of unknowns.
This is the struggle of chess, and as such, it is also the struggle of life. You’re constantly living with competing realities in your mind. With every decision you make, you’re left with both the reality of the world that you’ve created and the untold reality of what the world would look like had you chosen differently. Regardless of if you are looking forward or backward, this battle between the known and the unknown will rage on in your mind. Love it or hate it, this is the truth of how life works. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
These are the dualities that define our life. You can find examples of this concept of duality throughout human history. One particularly famous example that has always fascinated scholars is Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”. Without diving into the details, the theme of the story is the contrast between reality and our interpretation of it.
In the story, there is the world outside the cave (reality) and the world inside the cave (our interpretation of reality). This was the story that initially sparked an interest for the artist and designer Ali Ergin. During his PHD work studying Post-Truth philosophy, he began exploring the ways these dualities have evolved in the human psyche. Fast-forward 15 years and now he is bringing this thought-experiment to life through his latest NFT collection aptly-named “Duality”.
In this collection, the analogous “outside of the cave” is the physical world we all live in while the “inside of the cave” is our mind, with all of the dreams, thoughts, and desires that come with it. Each unique, 1/1 art piece in the collection explores a moment or experience in our lives that might have put the duality of our reality and our mind at odds.
Some of these pieces might represent a time in your life when there was a battle between what the world wanted and what your subconscious desired. Other times it might be a moment where the world and your mind were aligned. After all, dualities are not inherently negative. They are simply another aspect of the complicated game of life.
Ali has explored the world through many types of creative output in his past. He’s worked as both a designer and an interior architect. Drawing streets, buildings, and other things from our surroundings, this period of work was his exploration of the physical world. With this collection, he is now diving into the mind to see what he can create. His blending of colors in combination with the stylistic figures in each piece signify the emotions and desires that often pull is in different directions. It’s sometimes reminiscent of the shoulder angel and devil. Each color in a piece provides a different perspective and tone for how to approach a situation, but its up to the viewer to pick the path.
For Ali, the beauty of art is its ability to be used as an expression of one’s mind. It is like a unique language that is universally spoken by us all. The translations may vary, but the language of art allows us all to find our own meaning in a piece of art solely based on our own experiences. Finding the story within a piece is an important step in appreciating his work as art. Without the story, it is simply a drawing. Ali hopes his audience is able to find their stories in his art, so he can truly connect with them. He hopes to inspire viewers to do a bit of exploration in their minds.
This collection may spark a handful of questions in you. Are you manifesting your desires or letting the world define your reality for you? Are you the protagonist or antagonist in your past experiences and future dreams? Do you find yourself siding more with your inner voice or the outside world?
I’ll leave you with one last duality to think upon. Now that you’ve been opened up to this world of duality that surrounds us, will you choose to dive deeper and explore it?
My recommendation: take the hint from the outside world. Do it. We are aligned on this one.
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