I remember when three-dimensional digital art just began to surge up through the ranks of media. The flat surfaces and alien lights it created seemed to have seeped in from another dimension. People were making art that held a completely new tone. You couldn't render that coldness in paint. You could never make a sculpture look so airless.

Advances in technology have since allowed digital artists to create spaces lifelike enough that it can be difficult to tell whether they're real or simulated. Higher processing power has allowed us to breathe life back into rendered scenes. Landscapes can hold so much detail that we might imagine they're photographs taken of a living, breathing place. But both ends of the spectrum--the hyperreal and the hyper-alien--have been delved into quite thoroughly. It's the middle place, the quality that leads us to question the reality of the image before us, that presents the most questions and serves as the most fertile ground for the digital artwork of today.

Martinakis Adam is one artist who treads this ground with alarming success. He calls his work "digital sculptures", though in reality it's hard to place them in either the scale of sculpture or architecture. He threads human forms through the facades of buildings. Smaller figures serve as scale markers as they gawk at the partial giants before them. Hands reach up out of platforms. Bodies--seemingly made of granite, with visible seams--protrude from soaring walls. The giants, always headless, reach to each other through what appears to be a structural entrapment. They're stuck in our cities, offering hands to each other, trying to find a way to connect through the hard lines of concrete that make up the scaffolding of our everyday lives. 

Adam's work feels trapped full of pain--and beautifully so--but what's remarkable about it is how close to real it feels. Upon first glance you might not suspect that these works are not photographs of actual, physical objects. The way he manipulates light and texture is so realist that it makes the surrealism of the work itself stand out all the more. Unlike earlier work in the genre, you can't see the marks of computer generation. All you have is the image and the knowledge that it was never really there. 

Perhaps it is the Polish artist's background as an interior designer as well as an artist that gives these imaginary spaces their sense of weight and air. Either way, their dreamlike architecture strikes a powerfully unique note among a new medium. 

Adam currently teaches at Athens College in Greece. You can view more of his work on his DeviantArt profile.