Cognitive Dissonance
Ian Charles Lepine seeks to present beings trapped in a crossroads of contradiction: his interest is to display creatures whose very existence negates their very existence. These are beings at war with themselves, a war where all victories cannot but prove pyrrhic.
His sculptures are frequently accompanied by a poem in either English, French, or Italian, that seeks to give word to the tragedy intrinsic to the form.
Author: Ian Charles Lepine
Year: 2022
Title: Apollo, or Cognitive Dissonance
Technique: Ceramic clay sculpture, painted with oxides and enamel.
Cognitive dissonance is a psychological state of holding two contradictory beliefs at the same time which plunge the sufferer into a state of despair. Apollo is the god of beauty, music, and reason; Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy presents him as the opposite of Dionysus, who represents darker passions. Nevertheless, there is the Dionysian in the Apollonian; and the celestial in the hellish. For all his measure and restraint, Apollo is a ravisher, who pursued Daphne.
Cognitive Dissonance
I am a contradiction in the flesh:
My mind is breaking just under my eyes;
My thoughts are real, yes but real lies;
The labyrinth of self shall all enmesh.
I am a raging storm and have forgot
The taste of sunbeams as they cross the sky.
How did this happen? How, and, tell me why?
I have become a thing that I am not.
I feel a split run through my very being,
And see no way out of this contradiction.
I am confused, indeed, but with conviction.
Perhaps in this dark state I’ll find redeeming.
Apollo and Dionysus tear my soul
And yet in pain these Gods I’ll still extoll.
—8 June MMXXII