›Radical Ritual‹ 04/09/2020—07/11/2020

• Romans + Romans

Frankfurt 04/09/2020—07/11/2020

The video of the exhibition on the Lachenman Art YouTube channel can be found here .

The exhibition ›Radical Ritual‹ presents the special cosmos of images by the Berlin artist couple Römer+Römer in a rich, colorful display. Their mostly large-format paintings depict manga fans immersed in cosplay in Beijing, imaginatively decorated samba dancers in Rio de Janeiro, spectacular light installations and fantasy creatures from Fusion and the Burning Man Festival. Their works show snapshots that capture cultural peculiarities, peculiar festivals and rituals of the places they travel to together. Under the title ›Radical Ritual‹, these events combine to form a place where people can immerse themselves in another world and live it out radically and freely. This was also the title of the Burning Man Festival, which they visited in 2017 and whose motifs make up the majority of the exhibition. Many of the festival visitors travel in self-built vehicles to join the caravan or to give free rein to their creativity.

One of these art cars made from converted bicycles, embedded in a variety of light installations, can be admired in the 6-meter-long diptych Moon Landing Biker. The representation of the light from the many light strips and LED displays is combined in a special way with the painting technique of the artist duo Nina and Torsten Römer. The motif is created from a density of tiny dots of pure color placed next to each other, which in turn, when viewed up close, seems to dissolve into the structure of the individual spots. While impressionists and pointillists investigated the possibilities of depicting natural light in the plenair painting of the 19th century, here both natural light sources, for example from fireplaces, and artificial light are dissolved in pixel-like form. An analogy of pixels and light-emitting diodes is created, which reflects the visuality of the digital.

Nina and Torsten Römer developed their style at a time of change from analogue to digital photography. Their motifs are created on the basis of digital photographs, which they then translate into painting. This translation process testifies to how photography is constantly changing painting.

Their interest in the change and transformation of our time is evident in many different ways. Throughout their artistic careers they have been very intensively involved with social and political events and have expressed their observations and thoughts in numerous performances in addition to painting. Their shared interest arose very early on and they developed their first joint compositions while still at university. They both studied at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf and graduated together as a master student under AR Penck in 2003 as an artist couple.