Double Portraits - A Blockchain-Based Art

Double Portraits is a series of paintings that never reveal the whole truth at once.
Each work exists in two parallel realities — one for the human eye, and one for the cameras.

On the surface, we see a pop-iconographic image drawn from the arsenal of mass culture: gestures, symbols, myths, simplified stories through which politics is packaged as entertainment. This is the world we are shown.

But beneath it lies a second image — an infrared portrait, invisible to the naked eye and revealed only through IR cameras, surveillance systems or military-grade optics. This is the hidden reality that runs parallel to the public one — the space where decisions are made, where power speaks in its true voice.

Each painting in the series becomes a two-sided mask:
– on top: the media face of politics, filtered through pop culture;
– underneath: the political figure who actually moves history forward.

Double Portraits exposes the gap between what society sees and what technology registers; between the spectacle of public roles and the raw mechanics of power. The IR layer is not a decorative effect — it is a metaphor for an era of invisible surveillance, for a world where machines see more than humans.

The series continues Petko Dourmana’s long-standing interest in visual systems that fundamentally shift how we perceive history, politics, and presence. These works are not simply viewed — they are investigated.

Each viewer must choose:
Which image do you believe? The surface — or the one hidden beneath it?