As naked as life

“Without contraries there is no progression”

– William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Over the past years, everything about my major has been revolving around a crucial dichotomy: the binary system. 0s and 1s are the core of communication systems and modern networks. Understanding these polar states is somewhat trivial to the human mind which tends to quantify experiences between right and wrong, good and evil, real and imaginary. This Aristotelian logic that seems so bluntly simplistic is, however, what binds together the virtual world we are currently part of.

As with zeroes and ones, I find myself extremely at ease manipulating black and white. Creating darkness, dipping it in light, using my fingers to establish nuances, guiding the dying trickle of charcoal powder with my index finger.

Just like zeroes and ones are the modern language stripped to its basic essence, I attempted to strip the human body to the flesh in this drawing.

But, above all, what weighs the man in my drawing down are not his garments, as he’s nude, but ideologies, especially conflicting ones. His mind represents a war zone for what once he thought, what he currently thinks, and what is commonly thought. Perhaps,he’s attempting to somehow fix that. People pick up books, read articles, and try to broaden their knowledge in the hopes that, along with new information,ideas become convictions. People opt for a less blurry, more systematic approach to life structured by coherent theories, yet also by pragmatism.

[…]

The naked man leaned against the wall. He was not weary. He was resolute.

His feet didn’t ache. His mind did.