Thomas Demuth is a 3d artist from Germany. He uses 3d rendering software to create photo-abstract images based on polygon mesh structures. He calls his style “Polygonismus”, and the concept behind this style “The Economy of Polygons”. It is a dramatic and profound style that gives the artist’s work psychological depth and photo-abstract intensity at the same time.

In a world of a constantly increasing resolution, he is taking polygons back to their own beginning. This is the world where mathematics and algebra meet the sense of creativity.

THE MANIFESTO OF POLYGONISM

The polygon is the smallest visible part in the three-dimensional world of cybernetic art. Three points in space are enough to draw a polygon. Today, at the beginning of the 21st Century, we must recognize that the polygon will die out. It will not disappear by its lack of presence from view, but only by its wealth and ever-increasing number of points and surfaces. In the field of computer art the polygon will sink in nameless representable of nature.

The polygon is set to the unnatural. Its hard, sharp edge is the bulwark against nature and wants to put all things in the right light of its physics.. But the abstract form of the polygon world obeys its own physics. It is the physics of our own inner eye that stands up to its battle against the all-seeing eye of the binary code.

In the field of game design, we still are accustomed to the strange, seemingly able to admire edged, and abstract figures. But with increasing computer power polygons are now in the final state and will soon disappear.

Until a few years ago, the polygon was a necessary evil for the game industry, specifically. It was rather an unavoidable, aesthetic artifact, since the processing capacity decided on what one might see to the degree of complexity. Lara Croft began over ten years ago with about 500 polygons to conquer. Today, surfaces have increased by more than tenfold. The so-called low-poly modeling is the art of constructing a virtual computer character. The economic handling of points and surfaces guarantees the future perfect embedding and playability of the character in its virtual environment.

But why is the polygon and its associated possibilities of abstraction so important for art and for the viewing habits of the people? The polygon is still the last barrier between the abstract world of imagination and the world of the dictates of realism.
This peculiar binary world is built on the polygon but denies this. But at the same time, it will not continue to bother with him.

The mad race for the rounding, the immediacy and perfection of nature, includes also the unnaturalness of the edges and corners; the denial of his and of our own origin.