Roman Signer: Works

From May 10 through September 14, 2008, the Rochester Art Center will present Roman Signer: Works, one of the largest and most comprehensive exhibitions dedicated to the artist in the United States to date. Featuring sculpture, drawings, films and videos, the exhibition will offer a representative insight into a highly regarded and innovative artistic practice begun in the early 1970’s. Conceived and developed in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition will utilize all of the Art Center’s formal galleries and will include new sculptures and installations created specifically for this presentation. Regarded as one of the most important contemporary artists working in Europe today, Signer has participated in prominent exhibitions including the Venice Biennale (1976 + 1999), Documenta 8 in Kassel Germany (1987) and Skulptur Projekte Münster (1997). This exhibition will introduce Signer’s work to a broader audience and shed new light on this prolific and influential artist.

For decades, the work of Roman Signer (born in 1938, Appenzell, Switzerland) has continually challenged a traditional understanding of sculpture by creating new form from unconventional actions and materials such as barrels, boots, rockets, water, kayaks, tables, bicycles, dynamite, and balloons. Perhaps best known for his more spectacular works involving explosions or rapid change, equally characteristic of his practice are gentle, subtle and gradual transformations. Across this wide continuum of his work he addresses issues of time, chance, and change. His sculptures are at once highly conceptual yet easily accessible. Signer’s methodical process and carefully selected materials and actions reflect—often with awe and humor—cause and effect relationships that provide a natural point of entry. This however, is where the work begins, as Signer’s modes of presentation challenge the viewer to interpret and create meaning.

Helicopter with Spray Can (1997) and Bicycle with Wooden Beams (1997) are two works that epitomize Signer’s process from conception to conclusion. Even though the sculptures as they are presented are static, unmoving, and seemingly created in the past, they are imbued with a particular timelessness that belie their usual state—that of rest or completion. The sculptures convey a heightened sense of potential for action. Signer has stated, “always in my work something is going to happen, is happening or has happened. Or could happen.” In Helicopter with Spray Can, the act of drawing is left to a remote controlled helicopter, the actions of the pilot, and the environmental conditions of the location in which the action took place. As the helicopter flies low and circles over a grid of plywood on the floor, spray paint cans fitted to the bottom of the device create large, sweeping blue lines. The straightforward presentation of this work—bright blue marks in a circle, the paint cans, the helicopter—limited to the key components and evidence of the event, allows the viewer to imagine and reconstruct the action, directly pulling the work into the present tense.

Roman Signer: Works