Roman Signer
dal 1/11/2007 al 26/1/2008
Segnalato da
1/11/2007
Roman Signer
The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh
The works in the exhibition present curious combinations of objects, forces and effects. Inflatable armbands are attached to snow skis; an umbrella blasts through a briefcase; suspended from the ceiling, a bottle of whisky rotates over a fan. All of Signer's sculptures and films are art works, but they are also radical experiments. Signer makes them in order to see what will happen when objects are used against our expectations of them.
Works
The Fruitmarket Gallery’s winter exhibition is a solo presentation of the work of Swiss artist
Roman Signer. A major figure in international contemporary art since the early 1970s, Roman Signer
makes sculptures, installations and films that bring everyday objects together in unexpected ways.
This, his first exhibition in Scotland, presents new work made since 2000 in the context of Installation (2006),
a reworking of classic film works from as far back as 1975. Selected by the artist for The Fruitmarket Gallery,
the exhibition provides both a snapshot of his current preoccupations and an insight into the themes and ideas
that have inspired him throughout his long career.
The works in the exhibition present curious combinations of objects, forces and effects. Inflatable armbands are
attached to snow skis; an umbrella blasts through a briefcase; suspended from the ceiling, a bottle of whisky
rotates over a fan. All of Signer’s sculptures and films are art works, but they are also radical experiments.
Signer makes them in order to see what will happen when objects are used against our expectations of them.
Signer’s works challenge our ideas about familiar objects and how we experience them in time. Fireworks,
gunpowder, wind, fans and gravity are harnessed as animating forces, making possible his strange assemblages.
The film Office Chair (Bürostuhl) (2006) shows Signer sitting in a swivel chair spun round by two fireworks he hold
in his hands, releasing the chair from its desk-bound mundanity and turning it into a revolutionary fun ride. To
make Easter Bunny with Rocket (Osterhase mit Rakete) (2006) the artist shot a chocolate rabbit with a firework
through a small cannon at close range. The result, a damaged representation of a rabbit, elicits more sympathy
than its accepted fate as an edible confection. The works are paradoxes: serious and humorous; technically
difficult but visually simple, even elegant; absurd in their conception but supremely logical in their execution.
‘Like many people, I have ideas all the time, in bed or in the bath. It is the way the ideas are realised that is the
important thing. Sometimes I write them down or make a sketch. Unfortunately, I forget a lot as well.
And there just isn’t time to try everything’.
Roman Signer
The Fruitmarket Gallery
45 Market Street - Edinburgh
Mon—Sat 11am—6pm, Sun 12—5pm.
Admission free