Roman Signer

Roman Signer
Atelier, 2008

Roman Signer
3 blaue Kisten, 2008
Wood, blue paint, explosion
each 60 x 60 x 42 cm

Roman Signer
Kanone, 2005
Metal pipe, ball
120 x 33 x 80 cm

Roman Signer
Rohr mit Helicopter, 2007
Perspex pipe, small helicopters
230 x 8 x 8 cm

Roman Signer
Kabine, 2008
Wood, perspex pipe, small helicopters
92 x 211 x 210 cm (Kabine)

Roman Signer
56 kleine Helicopter, 2008
Video on DVD
3:14 min

Roman Signer
3 Explosionen, 2008
Tins, wood, explosives, blue paint
Installation view Galerie Martin Janda

Roman Signer
Tisch, 2008
Wood, explosives
107 x 68 x 74 cm

Roman Signer
Aktenkoffer, 2001
Briefcase
ca 100 x 85 cm

Roman Signer
Rampe, 2008
Colour photographs, 5 parts
Detail

Roman Signer
Rampe, 2008
Colour photographs, 5 parts
Detail

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Roman Signer

Opening: Thursday, November 27, 2008, 7 p.m.
Exhibition runs: November 28, 2008 to January 17, 2009

From November 28, 2008 to January 17, 2009, Galerie Martin Janda is showing new works by Roman Signer.
Having been invited to participate in numerous international solo and group exhibitions at prestigious institutions, Signer, born in 1938 in Appenzell, is one of the most important artists of our day. In his fourth solo show at Galerie Martin Janda, nearly all of the works he presents have not been exhibited before, and some were created expressly for the gallery’s spaces. Since the 1970s, Roman Signer has been working with carefully selected banal objects (e.g. a table, a chair, a box), as well as with different kinds of vehicles (a Piaggio, a bicycle or small wagon) which are propelled, deformed or destroyed with the assistance of different sources of energy. In the current exhibition, model helicopters have the leading role: they are lined up on a board like a squadron in a wooden booth. Some of them have slid through a Plexiglas tube and landed in a pile on the floor in front of the booth. Others are lodged like trapped insects in a tube nearby.
The film showing on the gallery’s lower level depicts 56 circling helicopters: At first they are perched on the ground in eight rows. Most of the small flying machines take off and fly around the space – and collide – like a chaotic swarm of mosquitoes, “like an army which is bent on destroying itself”. (Roman Signer)

Most of Signer’s occurrences take place without an audience. The viewer encounters objects, films or photographs, which are not merely documents, but, in an expanded definition of sculpture, are also works of art in and of themselves. This applies, for example, to 3 blaue Kisten (2008), which is set in the first of the two storefront spaces: Blue paint has erupted in the wooden boxes. The force of the detonation lifted the lid off the box, and a fog of blue particles was thrust out beyond the containers. For another piece, Kanone (2005), Signer used gunpowder to ignite his projectile: a soccer ball.

On the gallery’s lower level, Roman Signer has created a site-specific installation: Ignited electrically, 3 Explosionen (2008) distributed blue paint as a mural extending in three dimensions - on the walls, ceiling and floor.
The works Aktenkoffer (2001) and Tisch (2008) are on display on the upper level: while shreds are all that remains of the aluminium briefcase, the precise hole in the tabletop was created with a special blasting agent. Roman Signer speaks of “controlled destruction”, not destruction for destruction’s sake: The explosion is merely used to catapult an object into another state.