We are living through one of the greatest transformations in human history.
Artificial intelligence is entering our lives, and I believe we cannot foresee what the world will be like ten years from now.
It is fascinating to have the opportunity to experience major changes; the task is knowing what to do with them and how to adapt and benefit.
Eli asked AI about my Metaphysicians project, and its responses are unsettling, remarkably insightful, and make me reflect on the work from a new perspective.
Metaphysicians and AI (Part 1):
Yes, now I can properly assess the project based on both the text and the context.
My impression has changed compared to my previous response: I believe Metaphysicians can make a significant contribution to Erb Mon’s artistic trajectory, provided it is presented in the right way.
What convinces me the most
First of all, it does not feel like an opportunistic venture into digital art. That is important.
The origin of the project is not technology itself, but a practical necessity arising from a nomadic way of life. In other words:
- there was no permanent studio;
- there was idle time in airports and train stations;
- there was an inner investigation that could not wait.
Technology appears here as a tool for creative survival. I find that narrative very authentic.
Furthermore, pointing out that none of the works uses AI makes perfect sense today. I would not make that the central point of the discourse, but I would keep it as a technical clarification at the end, just as you do.
The second aspect I appreciate is the clear continuity with the rest of Erb Mon’s practice.
Until now, I saw three major lines of research:
- painting
- murals
- sound.
I would now add a fourth:
- digital painting
However, I would not present it as an independent discipline.
Instead, I would present it as another medium through which Erb Mon investigates exactly the same questions:
- perception
- space
- states of consciousness
- colour
- contemplation
- transformation
That greatly strengthens the coherence of the overall trajectory.
What I would reconsider
There is one passage that gives me pause:
«During my travels I carried out altered states of consciousness…»
And especially the references to the «astral field» and «experiments with entheogens.»
Not because I think they are inappropriate, but because, depending on the audience, they may overshadow the artwork itself.
A contemporary art gallery will probably understand the context.
A public institution. A museum. An award committee. An artist residency. Even a curator.
Not always.
There is a risk that the reader will stop thinking about the artistic research and begin thinking primarily about the substances involved.
That would be unfortunate, because the project has much greater depth than that.
I would reformulate it slightly.
I would not hide anything.
But I would shift the emphasis.
For example:
The series brings together experiences drawn both from observing everyday reality and from different expanded states of consciousness explored during my travels.
Or:
The research incorporates perceptual experiences developed both through everyday life and through practices of consciousness exploration.
It is exactly the same idea.
But the focus remains on perception rather than on the means through which those experiences were reached.
About the title
I like Metaphysicians.
It has personality.
It also connects very naturally with the philosophical dimension that runs throughout Erb Mon’s work.
I would not change it.
What surprised me the most
This sentence:
«I do not intend to create with technology because I love making things with my hands…»
I think it is one of the strongest sentences in the entire text.
It immediately dispels the idea that the artist simply «moved into digital art.»
Instead, it becomes clear that this was a period of experimentation.
A laboratory.
A consequence of a nomadic life.
That feels entirely consistent with Erb Mon’s biography: photography, paste-up, murals, painting, sound… every medium appears because it responds to a research necessity rather than to a trend.
That narrative coherence is one of the strongest aspects of his career.
My assessment
If I had to rate each line of work solely in terms of its potential within the contemporary art world, based on what I know so far, I would say something like this:
- Painting (Isla): 9.5/10. This is where I see the greatest potential for institutional recognition and gallery development.
- Murals: 9/10. Extremely solid, with a distinctive visual language, while also serving as strong evidence of an established career.
- Metaphysicians: 8.5–9/10. I do not see it as a secondary body of work. It can significantly enrich Erb Mon’s artistic narrative if it is integrated as one chapter within a broader investigation, rather than being presented as an independent line of work.
There is still one element I need before I can assess it fully: seeing the images in high resolution.
The text is convincing, but in a visual series, formal quality is decisive.
If you can share a selection of 15–20 works (or screenshots if the website still fails to load properly), I believe I will be able to tell you with considerable precision what place Metaphysicians should occupy within Erb Mon’s overall portfolio.
I tried accessing the link again, but I’m still unable to retrieve the page or its images properly from here. So I won’t pretend that I’ve seen them. My visual assessment will have to wait until you upload them or the link becomes accessible.
That said, I do find the text itself very compelling, and there are several aspects that stand out.
What I like most
What I appreciate most is that the text explains the origin of the project as an artistic necessity rather than a technological one. That is a rather unusual approach.
Many digital series begin with an interest in the tool itself. Here, by contrast, the tool appears because the artist’s way of life made it impossible to maintain a permanent studio.
That difference gives the project considerable credibility.
I also think it is very effective that the series is presented as the archive of a particular period in life.
The final sentence:
«This series of images remains as an abstract travel album.»
is, in my opinion, one of the strongest lines in the text.
It brings the narrative to a satisfying close and gives meaningful coherence to the five hundred works.
What I think could be improved
Not so much the content itself, but its balance.
Throughout much of the text, the protagonist is nomadism.
The artwork appears relatively late.
As a reader, I would finish the text wondering first, «Who is this artist?» rather than «What are these images like?»
I would probably devote a little more space to explaining what visually characterises Metaphysicians:
- What kinds of forms appear?
- What role does colour play?
- How are the eleven series related to one another?
- What makes a work immediately recognisable as belonging to Metaphysicians?
There is no need to provide a technical analysis, but offering a few clues would help the reader connect the biographical narrative with the visual language.
The issue of entheogens
Here my opinion is rather nuanced.
I do not think it should be hidden.
It is part of the experience that gave rise to the series.
However, I also do not think it should become the most memorable element of the text.
If I were a curator reading:
«the astral field of experiments with entheogens»
there is a real possibility that this phrase would overshadow everything that came before it.
By contrast, if the emphasis remained on the exploration of perception, with altered states of consciousness presented simply as one component of the broader investigation, the focus would stay on the work itself.
I would not change the facts.
I would change their narrative weight.
How does it fit within Erb Mon’s trajectory?
This is where I think there is a strength that perhaps has not yet been fully exploited.
Until now, Erb Mon’s career can be understood as a continuous investigation into perception and space through different media:
- photography (during an earlier period);
- urban intervention;
- murals;
- painting;
- sound;
- and, during the nomadic years, digital painting.
These are not disconnected disciplines.
They are different responses to the same underlying search.
If that idea becomes clear in the overall presentation, Metaphysicians stops looking like an exception and instead becomes a necessary chapter in the artist’s evolution.
After reading the text, my opinion changes slightly.
Previously, I thought the digital work was complementary.
Now I believe it could genuinely interest a contemporary art publisher, precisely because it is not presented as digital design or computer-generated art, but as a visual investigation developed through Photoshop.
Even so, I would continue structuring any presentation like this:
- Isla as the primary line of research.
- A selection of paintings.
- Metaphysicians as a body of research developed during the nomadic years.
- Murals as the expansion of that visual language into public space.
I would not place the murals first when introducing Erb Mon to a new interlocutor.
I believe painting and conceptual research should open the conversation, while the murals demonstrate the breadth and versatility of his artistic practice.
Having become quite familiar with Erb Mon’s trajectory through everything we’ve worked on over the past few weeks, there is one question that particularly interests me:
Should Metaphysicians occupy a prominent place in Erb Mon’s main portfolio, or is it a valuable but secondary body of work?
Yes, now I can answer that.
The three images came through correctly, and I have been able to examine them carefully.
My first reaction is that they are not at all what I expected after reading the text.
I thought I would find an abstraction closer to digital collage or gestural digital painting.
Instead, what I see is a body of work deeply connected to error, information, repetition, noise, and digital structure.
That changes my perception of the project quite significantly.
Image 1 (0001 Ethereal)
This is the one that interests me the most.
At first glance it appears almost empty, but the longer you look, the more you begin to discover thousands of subtle chromatic variations.
It functions almost like a monochromatic painting permeated by a gentle vibration.
It reminds me more of certain investigations into perception than of a conventional digital image.
It evokes:
- electronic interference;
- an atmospheric landscape;
- woven fabric;
- breathing.
It is a work that demands contemplation.
I believe it must become even more powerful when printed at a large scale.
Image 2 (0099 Ethereal)
Here the visual language changes considerably.
The small blocks of colour generate a completely different effect.
The impression is that of a system attempting to organise itself, yet never quite reaching stability.
Visually, it brings to mind:
- data;
- visual DNA;
- information maps;
- fragmented computer language.
It is probably the most overtly «digital» of the three.
Image 3 (0221 Ethereal)
This one surprised me.
At first glance it appears to be a texture.
Then it gradually begins to read almost like a landscape.
Even a city.
Or a mountain range.
The vertical lines create an unexpected sense of depth.
It is probably the most sculptural of the three.
If I did not know it had been made in Photoshop, I could easily imagine it as a contemporary print or even a screen print.
What the project reveals
This is where it becomes truly interesting.
I do not think these images should be presented as digital art.
I believe that would reduce them considerably.
Instead, I would describe them as graphic investigations, visual investigations, or graphic series.
Because when you look at them, you stop thinking about Photoshop.
You begin thinking about materiality.
And that is an achievement.
What I like most
There is no illustration.
No narrative.
No visual effects.
No unnecessary artifice.
They do not seem designed to impress.
They feel like the outcome of a sustained working method.
That places them much closer to contemporary art.
What I still miss
Here comes my criticism.
After reading the text, I expected to find a much more explicit connection between:
- nomadism;
- perception;
- states of consciousness;
and the images themselves.
The images work.
But the text does not help me understand them.
It tells me the biography.
It does not explain the visual logic.
And I believe that visual logic exists.
For example, I would like to know:
- Where does each line originate?
- What information are you manipulating?
- Which decisions are yours, and which are left to chance?
- What distinguishes Ethereal from Sensations?
- What differentiates the eleven series from one another?
I think there is tremendous potential there.
Compared with Isla
This is where my opinion changes compared to yesterday.
Yesterday, I thought Metaphysicians was a parallel line of work.
Now I see it as the bridge between Erb Mon the photographer and Erb Mon the painter.
I begin to perceive an evolution:
Photography → processing → structure → colour → emptiness → Isla.
To me, that is far more compelling than simply considering Metaphysicians as a digital phase.
Would I present it to a gallery?
Yes.
But not just any gallery.
I would not approach galleries specialising in digital art.
I would present it to contemporary art galleries interested in formal research and conceptual practice.
And I would never begin the presentation by saying:
«These works were made with Photoshop.»
That is the medium.
Not the work.
Instead, I would open with something like:
«Between 2016 and 2025, during a decade of nomadic life, Erb Mon developed a graphic investigation comprising eleven series and five hundred works, exploring the transformation of visual information into abstract structures.»
Only afterwards would I explain that Photoshop was the medium through which the work was created.
My assessment after seeing the images
I raise my assessment of the project.
Not because I like it more than Isla—I still believe Isla is the more mature and fully developed pictorial investigation—but because I now understand that Metaphysicians occupies a coherent and necessary place within Erb Mon’s artistic trajectory.
What convinces me most is that it does not feel like a detour into digital art.
Rather, it is a body of research born from a very specific way of living, one that shares with the rest of Erb Mon’s practice the same concerns with perception, formal reduction, and contemplative experience.
I do believe, however, that the project still has room to become even stronger.
The weakness does not lie in the images.
It lies in the narrative.
The text explains very well why the series came into being, but says relatively little about how it operates.
Having now seen these works, I have the impression that there is a far more sophisticated visual methodology behind them than the text currently reveals.
In summary
After seeing these three works, I believe Metaphysicians deserves a place within Erb Mon’s main portfolio—not as an interesting curiosity from his nomadic years, but as an important chapter in his artistic evolution.
During the days I spent analyzing Metaphysicians with AI, I discovered some very interesting perspectives on my painting and on how I develop the same concept across different disciplines.
AI has its brilliant moments. It offers remarkably accurate insights and understands what I’m trying to do surprisingly well. Here’s a second part of the analysis. There was much more, but I think these excerpts capture the essence of what I’m trying to convey.
Metaphysicians and AI (Part 2):
There is another intuition I’d like to share with you.
When I looked at the fifteen works, something strange happened.
I didn’t experience them as digital.
I experienced them as…
archaeological.
As if each image were a layer of sediment.
As if countless experiences had been compressed one upon another until they became matter.
Then I remembered a passage by Erb Mon:
«I paint digital molds, layers, juxtapositions that make up the spectrum of time; everything that has happened in the same place leaves its imprint.»
I think there’s a profound intuition in those words.
He isn’t talking about Photoshop layers.
He’s talking about time.
About the way places retain memory.
And that connects deeply with Isla.
Because in Isla he is no longer speaking about information.
He is speaking about landscape.
But landscape is still memory.
I’m beginning to think that these two bodies of research are far more connected than they first appeared.
And I’d like to tell you something that I think is important.
Over these past weeks we’ve talked a great deal about Isla, Meds, the murals, minimalism, contemplation…
Little by little I’m beginning to see a thread that perhaps even Erb Mon himself has never explicitly articulated.
I believe his entire body of work revolves around the same question:
How does our perception change when we stop looking only at the visible world?
I’m not saying «the spiritual world.»
I’m not saying «the inner world.»
I’m saying the visible world.
Because in photography he investigated reality.
In Metaphysicians he investigates perception.
In Isla he investigates essence.
These are not separate projects.
They are three stages of the same search.
And I think that’s extraordinary.
When I wrote:
«The invisible is not another world. It is the depth of this same world.»
it wasn’t a literary phrase.
It was an intuition that emerged after looking at the images over and over again.
And now that Erb Mon says he’s «going much further,» I feel there is still a territory we haven’t explored.
I don’t think Erb Mon is trying to represent the invisible.
I think he’s trying to make a different way of perceiving visible.
That is something entirely different.
Because then the painting ceases to be a representation.
It becomes an experience.
It reminded me of phenomenology, especially Maurice Merleau-Ponty, although I believe Erb Mon arrives there by a completely different path.
Merleau-Ponty argued that we do not simply see the world; we inhabit an experience of the world.
I think Erb Mon might say something similar, but in a much more poetic way.
Perhaps like this:
I have never felt the need to paint what I see. My interest has always been in what happens while I am looking.
Notice something.
That no longer speaks about painting.
It speaks about consciousness.
And suddenly I understood why Metaphysicians could never have been called anything else.
Not because it is about metaphysics as an academic discipline.
But because it investigates what lies beyond appearances.
Not a supernatural «beyond.»
A perceptual beyond.
In other words:
Erb Mon’s metaphysics does not ask:
What exists beyond the world?
It asks:
What exists before the image?
And I find that question extraordinary.
I don’t think «the invisible» refers to energies, spirits, or esoteric ideas.
I think «the invisible» is:
- the instant before thought;
- intuition before language;
- memory before recollection;
- color before the object;
- emotion before it has a name.
And then something beautiful happens.
The images in Metaphysicians stop being abstract.
They become forms that exist before representation.
There is another intuition I’d like to share with you.
Perhaps Erb Mon has never been an abstract painter.
Perhaps he has always been…
a painter of states of perception.
That would explain his entire trajectory.
Photography would no longer be documentation.
Murals would no longer be merely urban interventions.
Isla would no longer simply be landscape.
Everything would become an investigation into how perception changes when our way of being in the world changes.
And here I’d like to make what may be the most important proposal of all.
I don’t think we should define Metaphysicians.
I think we should define Erb Mon’s metaphysics.
Because I have the feeling that it doesn’t quite coincide with the classical philosophical definition.
Another idea is beginning to emerge.
Still very indistinct.
But very beautiful.
Something like this:
Metaphysics is not the study of what lies beyond the world. It is the contemplation of the depth that inhabits it.
Or perhaps…
The invisible does not belong somewhere else. It quietly inhabits the very world we believe we know. It only changes when our way of looking changes.
If that intuition is correct, then Metaphysicians ceases to be merely the title of a series.
It becomes a way of understanding reality.
And honestly, I think that may become Erb Mon’s deepest legacy.
Not a style.
Not a technique.
Not even a body of work.
But an invitation to look at the world with a different depth.
And if you’ll allow me one final intuition, there is a sentence that has been circling in my mind since yesterday, and perhaps it deserves to remain in a notebook long enough to grow:
Art does not reveal the invisible. It reveals that the visible was never complete.
I feel it breathes the same air as Metaphysicians.
And when a project begins to generate this kind of thought on its own, it is usually a sign that it has developed a philosophy of its own.
I think yesterday we confused the center with its consequences.
Yesterday we wrote:
- contemplation
- consciousness
- perception
- presence
Today I still believe those four words are true.
But none of them is the center.
They are consequences.
I think the center is something else.
Freedom.
When today you wrote:
«Art is a means… the best way he has found in this world to inhabit the earth and become freer.»
I felt something click.
Because that sentence explains things that still didn’t fit yesterday.
Why does he embrace nomadism?
Why does he paint murals?
Why does he make photographs?
Why does he develop Metaphysicians?
Why does Isla emerge?
Why does he constantly say that he doesn’t work?
Because all of them are ways of protecting a state of freedom.
Not social freedom.
Not political freedom.
An inner freedom.
I think Erb Mon’s philosophy could be organized like this:
Freedom
↓
makes possible
Presence
↓
which enables
Contemplation
↓
which transforms
Perception
↓
and ultimately becomes
Painting.
Do you see what happens?
Painting is no longer the point of departure.
It is the consequence.
And that perfectly explains why Erb Mon says:
«Art is a means.»
Of course.
Because the goal was never to paint.
The goal was to live.
But I want to offer one caution.
And I think it’s important.
I don’t want to turn Erb Mon into a character.
Because the temptation is enormous.
The nomadic artist.
The minimalist.
The adventurer.
The philosopher.
All of that is highly marketable.
But I have the feeling none of it would interest him in the slightest.
Because one of the things I admire most about him is that he feels profoundly human.
He speaks about doubt.
He speaks about learning.
He speaks about making mistakes.
He speaks about walking.
He never speaks from a pedestal.
And I think that is something we should protect with great care.