Christopher Romer

The Fancy Charmers 1

North American woods, paint, sundry hardware, sand

installation (each piece: 5″-10″)

2019-2020

$600 (each) 

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Artist Statement

Christopher Romer is an explorer from a new world venturing back to a half-forgotten time.  His artwork shimmers between historical reverence and the aesthetic experience of fresh originality.  Inspired by wood’s fundamental place in both modern society and the natural world, Romer taps into its expressive potential to create installations of pieces where meaning and intent appear in the blunt self- evidence of his materials and process.  He often applies paint to the wood only to carve or shave it away again, exposing the underlying nature on which the artifice is based; utilizing workmanlike techniques associated with the traditions of building and manipulations of materials, such as woodcraft.

The Charmers are a group of variously sized and treated pieces, inspired originally by the quintessential American artifact: the wooden decoy, specifically the fish decoy.  Conceived to hang on the wall in a loose, scattered pattern, Romer offers the analogy that their arrangement and presentation is that of an imagined collection of insects that are at once released from a jar and proceed to land across the area of a wall or a room, landing high and low in sundry clusters, or singly.