Römer + Römer
Römer + Römer's work includes painting, photography, digital art, printmaking and performance. They also curate exhibitions. Their reflection on the nature of digital images in photography and on the Internet led to the painterly technique that defines the character of all their works. The transfer of self-taken photographs into large-scale panel paintings occurs in many steps of abstraction. The couple breaks down their motifs on the canvas into areas of color and thousands of painted dots that, from a certain distance, combine in the eye of the viewer to form a sharp image. The closer one approaches the work, the more people and objects get lost in the abstract play of colors. What appears to be a realistic image is revealed to be an illusion. In contrast to impressionist pointillism, the color pixels can be interpreted as a reference to the flood of digital images in the age of selfiezism.
Accompanied by the spirit of departure and change in Berlin between 2004 and 2007, the artist couple's painting is particularly interested in urban life and the attitude to life of the younger generations. Since 2008, they have focused on motifs that they subtly capture and collect while traveling through Asia, South America, North Africa, the Middle East, Russia and various European countries. They integrate themselves into the idiosyncrasies of the various social contexts in order to formulate core ideas of the globalized world and implement them in painting. Larger series of paintings are thus created about cosplay in Beijing (2009), about Japan with the cycle 50 Views of Mount Fuji Seen from a Train (2009) as a tribute to Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Hiroshige, about the port city of Busan in South Korea (The Flood, 2010), the banlieus of Paris (2010), about Israel (2011) and Gay Pride in Brighton, England (2011). From the research trip to Brazil the cycle of works is created Sambódromo (2013) about the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, showing costumed dancers and actors before their performance in the area of the stadium, the Concentraçao. Between 2013 and 2016, Römer + Römer engage with the music festival Fusion, which takes place annually at a former Soviet military airport in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. In 2017, the artist duo travels to the Nevada desert, USA for image research on the legendary Burning Man Festival. Fire, light and LED stagings, freaky installations, art cars, burns and parties in the middle of the ephemeral Black Rock City are focused in their painting.
Nina Römer (*1978 as Nina Tangian in Moscow) and Torsten Römer (*1968 in Aachen) met while studying painting at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where together they became master students of A.R. Penck. In 1998 they joined forces to form the artist couple Römer + Römer and graduated with a joint final project. They have been working together on all their projects and works since 1998. Since 2000 they live and work in Berlin.
Their work has been presented in numerous solo exhibitions in Germany and abroad, including at Galerie Urs Reichlin in Zug, Switzerland (2022/2023), Lachenmann Art in Frankfurt/Konstanz (2020/2022), Galerie GPLcontemporary in Vienna (2021), Galerie Haas & Gschwandtner in Salzburg (2019), Lab36 at Galeria Senda in Barcelona (2019), at Haus am Lützowplatz in Berlin (2019), at Kunstverein Münsterland (2017), at Galerie Michael Schultz in Berlin and Seoul (2006-2015), at Galerie Freight + Volume in New York (2014), at Zhan Zhou Center in Beijing (2013), at Gwangju Museum of Art in Korea (2010), at Kunsthalle Rostock (2010), at Today Art Museum in Beijing (2009), and at Heidelberger Kunstverein (2009).
n addition, her works have been on view many times as part of institutional group exhibitions, in: Kunstverein Speyer (2019), Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2019), Schafhof in Freising (2018), Kunsthalle Hense in Gescher (2018), Bröhan Museum in Berlin (2017), CCA Andratx in Mallorca (2017), Museum Wilhelm Morgner in Soest (2017), Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt (2015), Central Exhibition Hall in Perm (2013), Wilhelm Hack Museum in Ludwigshafen (2012), Künstlerhaus Vienna (2012), Cranach Foundation in Wittenberg (2012), Hartware MedienKunstVerein in Dortmund (2010), Wuhan Art Museum in China (2009), Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2005), Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (2004), Neue Manege in Moscow (2004), St. Petersburg's Center of Visual Arts (2003).
Various biennial participations have taken Römer + Römer to Venice (56th Biennale di Venezia, National Pavilion of Mauritius, 2015), Bosnia-Herzegovina (Biennial of Contemporary Art, D-O ARK Underground in the former Tito bunker, 2011), Istanbul, Vancouver, San Francisco and various other cities (Emergency Biennial, 2005-2008), Liverpool (Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art, 2002) and Turin (BIG Torino, 2002).