Pascal Dombis, French mathematician/artist, uses computers and algorithms to generate complex visuals by manipulating simple processes through excessive repetition and layering. By computationally reproducing geometric or typographical signs, he reconstructs common structures and develops irrational environments. His work recalls Jackson Pollock’s Abstract Expressionist paintings in appearance, however Dombis’s work is kinetic. Dombis, like Pollock, has adopted the idea of providing the spectators with new experiences by presenting them with large-scale projected visuals or flat prints, which represent alien environments. The spectators become part of a virtual experience and hence are not expected to engage with it like they do with reality. Consequently the experience is unique and it enables the viewers to be subjective when interpreting it. Dombis uses ordinary and familiar shapes but he complicates them through repetition and reformation. This essay will contrast Dombis’s dynamic environments to Pollock’s still images within the context of movement, medium, form and method, compare their similarities in terms of using large-scale canvases and abstract shapes and finally discuss the effect they create on the overall experience of the viewer by examining Dombis’s Irrational Geometrics, 2005-2015.

Pollock and Dombis represent different times in Western art: Modernism and Postmodernism respectively.  The late artist Pollock (1912 – 1956) was a leading pioneer of American Abstract Expressionism and he continues to be regarded as an iconic Modernist figure. Modernism is characterised by the rejection of traditional concepts and techniques of the creative act and pushing towards innovative ideas and styles, especially in painting as artists referred to Abstraction rather than Representation; Modern Impressionist painters established the distinction between image and subject. Pollock achieved fame and success as Modernism was verging into Postmodernism and till this day he is still recognised not only for his innovative style, but also for inventing a new painting method – action painting – that requires the artist to be an active part of the artwork rather than an outsider. Moreover the interpretation of a Pollock painting is subjective to a knowledgeable spectator, who in this case becomes a participant. Postmodernism emerged as a reaction against the trends of Modernism; the new philosophy rebelled against hierarchies of good and bad art and style. Additionally it embraced the idea of pluralism and art as an experience and in this aspect Pollock was seen as a major influence. Postmodernism welcomed the mixture of styles and media as well as deriving inspiration from all surroundings, including science and simple aspects of everyday life. The introduction of new technology assisted with the change as it enabled artists to experiment with and produce virtual realities in the form of installation art. Dombis represents the Postmodernist movement as he comes from a mathematics and IT engineering background. The complex visuals he produces are the results of over twenty years of experimentation with the digital manipulation of simple algorithm rules.

Dombis’s work falls within the Computer Art realm. However, as computers became ordinary tools, the description of the medium came to be known as Electronic Art or New Media Art. The medium is a source of still-lively concepts that originate from scientific disciplines and draw elements from Modernist Avante Garde practices like the speed of Futurism, the industrial forms of Constructivism, and the space-time geometry of Cubism. New Media Art highlights the union of science and art. New Media artist and curator of Imaging By Numbers (2008) – where Dombis’s work was exhibited - Paul Hertz suggests that New Media Art has become a key in contemporary visual culture even though it is slightly neglected in art history and has a low visibility rate in the contemporary art world, i.e museums, galleries, and private collections. New Media Art pushes artists to experiment with new technology and expand its potential, so that artists are now able to create virtual realities and a new type of surreal environments.

Moreover, New Media Art traces its history to the late 1950s during the early age of computers. The first to experiment with it was a group of artists in Zagreb, Croatia called New Tendencies. They were fascinated with the aesthetic results and saw the medium to be liberating as it allowed easy experimentation and produced unimaginable visuals. For instance they were able to digitally illustrate the visual illusions that psychedelic drugs cause. They described new media tools as tools for escaping rather than stimulating a lived experience. Vladimir Bonacic, a member of New Tendencies in 1968 added that the computer is not simply a means for stimulating what exists in a new form, rather it provides us with a new substance that reveals a new world before our eyes. Furthermore, New Media Art relates to conceptualism in the sense that coding relates to digital artwork comparable to the way concept relates to analogue artwork; meaning that “code not only describes the work, it produces it”, says Hertz (2009). Early New Media artists, including Michael Noll and Collete and Charles Bangert, argued that the machine itself is not the medium, instead it is the software used.