The concept began with a classical statue — the kind of image that already carries history and weight — and a single formal decision: cut it out, duplicate it, mirror it, and see what happens when something monumental faces itself. The mirror effect changes the reading of the figure entirely. What was a singular, authoritative form becomes something more ambiguous — symmetrical in a way that feels almost biological, or ceremonial, or unsettling depending on the angle. From that single composition, I built four distinct chromatic variations, each one pushing the palette in a different direction to test how radically color can transform the meaning of an image that otherwise remains identical. What fascinates me in that exercise is how completely each version becomes its own thing. The same shapes, the same structure, four completely different emotional registers.
The build was entirely constructed in Photoshop, using freely available textures to introduce depth and surface variation into what would otherwise read as too flat and too clean. Ink splashes were added at specific moments in the composition to interrupt the perfection of the mirror — to introduce the kind of controlled accident that keeps a symmetrical image from feeling mechanical. The typography and its placement were designed to extend the mirror logic beyond the image itself, so that even the text participates in the reflection rather than simply labeling it.
Where the original asserts, this version withdraws. The shift to dark blue introduces a coolness that reframes the mirrored figure entirely — what felt radical now feels elegiac. The symmetry reads less as confrontation and more as contemplation, as if the statue is no longer facing itself but mourning itself. Distance replaces weight. Pink destabilizes the monument. The same structure that felt authoritative in black becomes something rawer here — exposed, almost tender. The mirror effect takes on an emotional charge it didn't carry before, turning the ceremonial into the vulnerable. It is the version where the figure feels most human, and least in control. Green is the only variation where the mirrored figure seems to reach forward rather than turn inward. There is something generative in this palette — not the finality of black, not the grief of blue, not the exposure of pink, but the suggestion of something unfinished. The statue, for once, looks less like an artifact and more like a beginning.
