Roman Signer

• 15.09.–23.10.2004

A telephone receiver rotates at high speed around a telephone booth. A simple wooden table which hangs from the ceiling is kept in perpetual motion by a fan. Next to it a firework funnel is powered by a vacuum cleaner. These are a few of Roman Signer’s sculptures in the Swiss artist’s third Personal at Galerie Martin Janda, opening the Fall season on September 14, 2004. The show includes objects, installations and photos, which were produced specifically for this exhibition and are being shown for the first time.

Since the 1970s Roman Signer has worked with carefully selected everyday items — table, chair or box — as well as with different vehicles — Piaggio, bicycle or small wagon — which are set in motion, deformed or destroyed with application of energy from different sources. The artist sends the aforementioned Piaggio (a three-wheel delivery moped with enclosed cabin) down a ski jump.

In the gallery’s upper floor we are showing the premiere of Signer’s video documenting the largest sculpture he has created to date for the public realm: Im steirischen Wald depicts the process of making a double-spiral garden which was dynamited from a former wood storage yard.