Eruption, 2011 - Jacob Feige

Jacob Feige's paintings take 19th-century Romanticism as a departure point, with grandly atmospheric views of contemporary landscapes that nod at his predecessors' pursuit of the sublime. The artist takes his paintings a few steps further, however, using a supersaturated color palette that isn't quite of the natural world and then superimposing geometric shapes that seem to lie somewhere between Buckminster Fuller's dome and computer modeling. Paint that Feige spills, pours, and drips over his canvases creates an added kaleidoscopic effect, placing the viewer at a further remove from the bucolic scene.

The result of the artist's layered process is a portrayal of nature that now must share its transcendental power with the modern world's technological innovations, and where neither the idealized view of Romanticism nor Fuller's vision of utopia fully exist. Feige's paintings have been shown at institutions such as Artist Space, the Cranbrook Museum of Art in Michigan, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and his art was included in the 2005 Daimler Chrysler Emerging Artist Award Exhibition.Read Less