Artist's Statement and Exhibitions

Artist’s Statement

Bob Eige is an emerging new media artist who was born in Newark, NJ and who now lives in the Sierra Foothills of California. His childhood inspirations included frequent visits with his family to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He says that art is in his family genes — his grandmother’s cousin was the famous cubist painter Max Weber.

The artist is best known for the groundbreaking way he uses a 3D fractal-based graphics program (Mandelbulber 3D Fractal Explorer) combined with Photoshop. His digital artwork encompasses Generative Art and Appropriation Art. His digital paintings are printed on paper, acrylic and aluminum. Some are rendered as 3D anaglyph images. When viewed through anaglyph glasses these images literally “pop off the surface”. The artist’s sources of inspiration include space exploration, cosmology and Zen.

Intention. Eige believes that art and music have played an important role in the evolution of consciousness and states, “As artists we are challenged to discover how we might contribute to this evolution. We need to explore new worlds of imagery in order to find great beauty, share our awe of the natural world and what spiritual wisdom we might have acquired. Many artists are dedicated to creating artwork that is leading our culture to more enlightened times. For my part, I use the Mandelbulber 3D Fractal Explorer to help lead me to deeper experiences of consciousness and to create images intended to help others access that consciousness.”

Generative Art and Creative Visualization. Generative Art plays a significant part in the artist’s approach. He says he uses the 3D fractal software for Creative Visualization and says that Creative Visualization is an analogue of Scientific Visualization and the royal road to new worlds of imagery. He describes his approach, as follows, “The Mandelbulber: 3D Fractal Explorer has hundreds of parameters and I select those I want to work with and then explore imagery by varying the values for the selected parameters. Parameters include elements such as the placement of the primary fractal object. This object is somewhat akin to a sculpture's block of marble. By chipping away at the block the inner object of beauty is revealed. Other software parameters are for lighting, texture, and the placement of primitives, such as spheres and cubes. I allow the program a great degree of autonomy. While at times, I carefully think through the values I want to select, other times I use intuition or even a random guess. I then render the image and use my aesthetic sense to accept the chosen values, modify them, or begin working on other parameters. Once the values for the chosen parameters have been set, the program renders the image. Many images are the result of hundreds of iterations. The software supports Creative Visualization and its very complex algorithms, in conjunction with the autonomy I allow, results in many surprises. Some surprises are very pleasing and some not so much. Using an iterative and Generative Art approach, my work evolves through time. One piece of art may spawn many different variations. A saved work contains all the necessary settings for it to be rendered by the program. In the future I may choose to share the saved settings for certain artworks. Theoretically, my artwork could continue to evolve beyond my lifetime! I find this concept to be particularly exciting and I may be its creator.”

Appropriation Elements. Some of Eige’s digital paintings incorporate “borrowed” image samples taken from NASA supplied Hubble Space Telescope  (HST) photographs. HST images are altered in Photoshop and then brought into the Mandelbulber 3D Fractal Explorer and used as backgrounds. 

Artistic Style. Eige’s current work encompasses several styles — abstract, surrealism/fantasy and realism. Many of his paintings have recognizable elements such as sky, stars, water, mountains, rocks and animals. These elements are combined and artistically manipulated resulting in many paintings that are truly unique. The artist’s paintings include fragments from many cultures and traditions including Egyptian, Indigenous peoples of the world, Chinese, and Japanese.

Art Installations in Development. Eige is currently preparing art installations that will include six or more large prints on aluminum. Some prints will be of 3D anaglyph images. Each visitor will be given a pair of 3D anaglyph glasses. Since the images are based on a fractal program, even very large images have great detail. The experience provided by the installations will be completely unique from a creative and interactive perspective. With anaglyph 3D paintings the viewer must explore each piece by moving their head and their distance from the artwork to bring it into proper focus. Images don’t have a fixed location on the media and viewers can actually see into some parts of the image. The planned art installations are also educational on several levels. They will introduce viewers to 3D anaglyph fractal art, generative art principles such as emergence, a unique application of appropriation and also the great beauty of nebulae.

Exhibitions

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San Luis Obispo Museum of Art’s A Digital Art Salon March 5–May 2, 2021, San Luis Obispo, CA

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Marin Society of Artists

Celebration of Art 2020

Online Gallery Show

August 18 - October 14, 2020

Awarded "Third Prize" for Cliffs of Keshwar

Archival pigment limited edition print

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Artbox Project Zürich, 2019

Contemporary & Digital Art Fair (CADAF)

CADAF MIAMI

December 5 - 8, 2019

Online Gallery

One archival pigment limited edition print on paper

LagunaART.com, Laguna Beach, CA

LagunaART.com Online Gallery

Artwork on display since September 2019

Three archival pigment limited edition prints on paper

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Pashmin Art Gallery, Hamburg, Germany

Group Exhibition: Fantasy: Natural and Supernatural

April 20, 2019 - May 20, 2019

Three digital paintings on acrylic

HFA - Hindman Fine Arts, Sacramento, CA 

Online Gallery

Artwork on display since December 2018

Three archival pigment limited edition prints on paper

Tahoe City Maritime Museum, Tahoe City, CA 

Exhibition: The T-files: The Search for Tessie.

May 25, 2018 - April 30, 2019

Two archival pigment limited edition prints on paper

Benko Art Gallery, South Lake Tahoe, CA 

Tahoe Tessie group art show

July 29, 2017 - August 26, 2017

3979 Lake Tahoe Blvd, South Lake Tahoe, CA

Two archival pigment limited edition prints on paper

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