For more than 15 years, the French artist Pascal Dombis has been charting new territory in the field of new media and computer art. Dombis’ practice centers on taking one simple process, a mathematical algorithm in a computer program, and repeating it until it evolves into something irrational and chaotic. As a result there is a great paradox at the heart of Dombis’ work between orderly control of a simple rule and unpredictable results. The process is simultaneously random and mechanical, a machine creates the rule but the resulting artwork effectively takes on a life of its own. Dombis gives form to his concept through the use of video, film projection, large prints and lenticular prints.
In his video work, the artist animates real-time line movements and their progression as they duplicate and become increasingly chaotic. Digital prints, on the contrary, freeze those movements at a certain moment, as if time were suspended for a while. When the digital prints are covered with lenticulars (functioning then as optical lenses), the number of points of view grows and multiplies according to the viewer’s physical displacements or changing angles of vision. Thus, every new piece offers plays on lines, stripes, and rhythms and chromatic variations which open up to new spaces and give to the whole a highly pictorial dimension. Trained as a painter with a keen eye for the importance of aesthetic harmony in his work, Dombis enriches his compositions with colour which is commanded by a random access programme.
In recent lenticular print works the artist furthers his geometric pieces by employing a more complex line of enquiry. Rather than exploit one programmed shape or movement, Dombis uses Google to search for a particular word or set of words. His search enquiries range from simple word couples such as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ to a full list of words censored in mainland China, to contemporary shortland such as ‘LOL’. The results are extracted in their thousands, at random and presented as a myriad of ever-moving images in the lenticular print. The results are staggering, the patchwork of images extracted from cyberspace are diverse and it is impossible to see every one independently. No two viewers will ever experience Dombis’ pieces in the same way, the experience is unique and depends on height, movement, stance and even psychology.
Dombis has exhibited widely throughout Europe, the U.S. and even Japan. His work is included in permanent collections including the Block Museum in Chicago and the Musee des Beaux Arts.
