CHRISTOPHER SANTER is a graduate of Ohio University, where he earned his M.F.A. in 1994. He also received a B.F.A. from the University of Dayton, Ohio, in 1989.

SANTER is a recipient of the 2004 McKnight Foundation Fellowship (Minneapolis, MN) and his work appears in "New American Paintings."

In an era of unbridled technological advancement and a constantly accelerating environment of commerce, culture, lifestyles and information, SANTER'S paintings utilize elements of massive highway systems to impart a subtle mixture of speed, complexity, alienation, and loss of control.

In his paintings, SANTER associates these images with the experience of growing up in a modern culture of speed that in itself is full of contradiction, where techno-progress can bring both efficiency and connectedness while at the same time confusion and isolation; where the acceleration of everything begets equal measures of hope and dread.

SANTER'S imagery manipulates and fragments these highway interchanges into isolated knots of empty overpasses, seemingly being constructed and abandoned at the same time. His paintings develop with inherent contradictions: road completions through misalignment; concrete dressed with the colors and words of fantasy; romanticism meeting the cold, hard pavement.

The dream of a perfect culture, given birth by technology, seems to mirror the optimism and fantasy of new romance. This notion has SANTER equally amused and intrigued, which moves him to cloak these iconic ribbons of progress with a sugar coating of sardonic candy.