“Supersonic Nonplace” (2021)

Solo show @ BRDG Project, Denver, CO

Excerpt from Artist Statement:

Growing up in a suburban Detroit landscape, many of Romelle’s formative surroundings were Nonplaces. Think: a Target parking lot, airport terminal, or a random coordinate on the highway. Is it a real place or are you just passing by?

The term ‘Nonplace’, first appeared in 1995 via Marc Augé’s book “Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity” and refers to “spaces of transience, where concerns of relations, history, or identity are erased”.

While you may remember being there, a defining factor of what makes those spaces memorable is not the spaces themselves, rather what happened within them.

Often, a flattening of time occurs as a byproduct of a Nonplace, which can be felt similarly in an old parking lot that has seemed the same as it did when we sat there in our car 10 years ago. Romelle suggests, “As we push our lightspeed agendas, we must question the reality of time as it relates to our circumstances. Sure we’ve been here before, but have we learned anything since the last time we arrived?”

We see these ideas in the works presented in the show through combining neon works with paintings intense in color palette. While the viewer is drawn to paintings reminiscent of the tropics, and lights insistent on a good time, they are confronted with another reality of the present moment.

Overall, we understand the Nonplace as an anomaly within itself because it asks us to evaluate the presence of our experience. This requires an escape to brighter things ahead, even if we don’t quite know the full capacity to which they will exist.