Roman Signer Xlviii

ROMAN SIGNER XLVIII. Biennale di Venezia 1999. Svizzera

3 Erscheint anlässlich der Ausstellung im Schweizer Pavillon im Rahmen der Biennale in Venedig 1999 Publié à l’occasion de l’exposition au pavillon suisse dans le cadre de la Biennale de Venise 1999 Pubblicato in occasione della mostra nel padiglione svizzero, allestita nel quadro della Biennale di Venezia 1999 Published for the exhibition at the Swiss Pavilion as part of the 1999 Venice Biennale

Ausstellung / Exhibition

Kommissär / Commissioner: Urs Staub Vizekommissär / Vice Commissioner: Konrad Bitterli Pressebetreuung / Press support: Oliver Wick Photographie / Photography: Stefan Rohner Sprengtechnik / Explosive support: Günther Schwarz, Roman Signer Technische Betreuung / Technical support: Urs Burger, Arthur Clerici, Stanislav Rogowiec, Tiberio Scalbi, Roland Sutter Videotechnik / Video support: Aleksandra Signer, Videicompany, Aufdi Aufdermauer, Karin Wegmüller

Katalog / Catalogue

Konzeption / Conception: Roman Signer, Peter Zimmermann Redaktion / Edited by: Konrad Bitterli, Matthias Wohlgemuth Übersetzungen / Translations: Jeanne Haunschild (e) Diane de Rahm (f) Monica Nolli-Meyer (i) Gestaltung / Design: Peter Zimmermann Videobilder / Videostills: Aufdi Aufdermauer, Aleksandra Signer Satz, Lithographie / Typesetting, Lithography: Nievergelt Policom AG, Zürich, Peter Zimmermann Graphic Design, Zürich Druck / Printed by: Lichtdruck AG, Dielsdorf Einband / Bound by: Buchbinderei Burkhardt AG, Mönchaltorf

Herausgegeben vom Bundesamt für Kultur, Bern, im Verlag Edition Unikate, CH-8027 Zürich Published by Swiss Federal Office of Culture, Berne, with Edition Unikate, CH-8027 Zürich

ISBN 3-908617-01-4 Printed in Switzerland

4 INHALT / SOMMAIRE / SOMMARIO / CONTENTS

Konrad Bitterli

EREIGNIS-SKULPTUR – Roman Signer an der 48. Biennale in Venedig ...... 7

UNE SCULPTURE-EVENEMENT – Roman Signer à la 48e Biennale de Venise ...... 15

SCULTURA EVENTO – Roman Signer alla XLVIII Biennale di Venezia ...... 23

EVENT-SCULPTURE – Roman Signer at the 48th Biennale in Venice ...... 31

INSTALLATIONEN AN DER BIENNALE IN VENEDIG / INSTALLATIONS A LA BIENNALE DE VENISE / INSTALLAZIONI ALLA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA / INSTALLATIONS AT THE BIENNALE IN VENICE ...... 39

ARBEITEN FÜR DIE BIENNALE IN VENEDIG / PIECES POUR LA BIENNALE DE VENISE / OPERE PER LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA / WORKS FOR THE BIENNALE IN VENICE ...... 67

BIOGRAPHIE / BIOGRAPHIE / BIOGRAFIA / BIOGRAPHY ...... 93

AUSSTELLUNGEN / EXPOSITIONS / MOSTRE / EXHIBITIONS ...... 93

BIBLIOGRAPHIE (AUSWAHL) / BIBLIOGRAPHIE (SÉLECTION) / BIBLIOGRAFIA (SELEZIONE) / SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 95

5 EVENT-SCULPTURE

Roman Signer at the 48th Biennale in Venice

“When I arrive in a new city, I usually search out water.”1 Roman Signer Outdoors in Kassel (on the Karlsaue), the artist laid out 1’000-page stacks of white writing paper in a row at intervals of 50 centimeters. These made a line in space, i.e., Water is perhaps the most crucial material ingredient in Roman Signer’s work. This a minimalist floor sculpture, which brought the lawn into rhythmic interactive relation- natural element in its many different forms had for him an early fascination in a ship with the three-dimensional placement and the intermediate spaces. Yet the childhood spent growing up on the banks of a river often swollen from rain. structure was not conceived as a static object, but as the first, provisional stage of a Considering Roman Signers intensive artistic exploration of the element water, his sculpture in several parts. Equipped with an explosive charge and a blasting cap, invitation to present this year’s Swiss contribution to the 48th Biennale in the lagoon the 300 stacks of paper were brought to a simultaneous explosion: a bang, a hazy city of Venice raises manifold expectations. For the Swiss Pavilion, the artist has cloud of smoke and 300’000 pages shot up, flapped in the air and transformed the conceived of a dense series of works. Starting with his intense occupation with austere, ground-based artwork into the multi-faceted, flickering, gentle downward Bruno Giacometti’s pavilion architecture and his own repeated encounter with “la glide of a white wall. For one moment only, the artist had set up an ephemeral Serenissima”, he has fused site-specific installations with other works into an phenomenon in space, a riotously whirling form that sank slowly to earth and alighted ensemble that enables him to link architectural with conceptual space. Inscribed in there to become an irregular field of thousands of paper sheets. The original order is the autonomous development of his work, Roman Signer’s Biennale contribution transformed by a violent action into a different state, a chaotic structure. The abrupt contains manifold references to the city and its mutable history as well as to the power of the explosion, the propulsion, is followed by a gradual subsidence; the violent waters of the lagoon. energetic thrust, by a meditative descent. Like a virtuoso, the artist stages the most “Cabin” (1999), “Bicycle” (1982/99), “Fontana di Piaggio” (1995), “Simultaneous” diverse, partly counteractive movements and energies: upward drive versus downward (1999), “Blue Barrel” (1999), together with a series of videos, allow a profound glide, contraction versus expansion. insight into Roman Signer’s work and draw a line beyond the actual occasion of the 48th Biennale to the sum of his artistic oeuvre. What is clearly manifest in this action – Roman Signer prefers the term “event” – is his understanding of what sculpture is. Starting from the Sixties and their expansion of traditional ideas of three-dimensional forms – the “dematerialization of art” into A Process-Art Sculptural Concept acts and processes – his work in 1971 began at first with objects that visualized natural forces with an almost scientific meticulousness. In his artistic inquiry, a kind of Roman Signer, as he never tires of saying, has always viewed himself as a sculptor. three-dimensional basic research, Roman Signer dedicated himself to the inherent Even his many actions before an audience – for example the famous closing action to energy potentials of nature and the physical properties of such familiar things as documenta 8 – he insists on calling sculpture, although they are only momentary: sand, stone or water. But he also translated fire, rockets and explosions into epheme- “I have perhaps a different concept of sculpture. It is one that has gradually ral structures or used their respective energy potential to deform or transform tables, developed from my actions. I have always regarded myself as a sculptor. At issue are chairs, beds, stools, bicycles, model helicopters or barrels. Over the years these always problems of space, the occurrences in space, lapses of time.”2

31 everyday objects formed a precisely selected, numerically manageable repertoire, which nes time as an inscribed dimension of sculptural form. Roman Signer’s oeuvre reveals the artist could fall back on in ever new combinations. His transitory sculptures have a finely differentiated spectrum of temporal structures, beginning with the “Action with been recorded in photos and film, whereby these media have in time taken on a life of a Fuse” (1989) lasting 35 days via the finely orchestrated multi-part action on the their own. occasion of the re-opening of the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (1987) or the brief phenomenon of the closing action of documenta 8 (1987) up to the super-speed In Roman Signer’s work an artistic attitude emerges that decisively contributes to the installation “Vitesse: 2’000 mètres/seconde” (1992): “Sequence, simultaneity, traditions of Process Art and that fundamentally redefines the arrangement of sculp- duration, instantaneity, continuity, consolidation and rhythm shape the course of an tural forms. His sculptural concept deconstructs the conventional art categories entire compendium from modes of the temporal.”4 through the moment of action, the expansion into space and the dimension of time. The expansion of sculpture through the dimension of time leads to a crucial extension into space. The dematerialization of sculptural form plus the time factor makes it Space and Time: the structure of the work possible to measure and “rhythmize” large spaces, as in the noted “Action with a Fuse”. From September 11th to October 15th 1989, Roman Signer set a fuse alight Roman Signer’s whole production is based on a specific work structure. It is subdi- from his birthplace Appenzell to St. Gallen where he now lives. The fuse was laid vided, like states of aggregation, into three clearly defined phases: 1. the basic starting along the train tracks in standard lengths of 100 meters that were then joined point that incorporates potential form changes: in the case of the documenta action, together by metal explosive devices filled with black powder. The flame smoldered the lining up of the paper stacks, 2. the actual process, the change of this potential inside of the fuse, insulated from the damp, and only a fine, hardly discernible cloud into action: the papers’ upward propulsion and their glide downward, 3. the traces of of smoke hinted at its calm advance forwards. The slow burn ignited a tongue of the elapsed process: the papers scattered over the ground as total form. flame at the junctures, before it then quietly ate its way through the rest of the fuse. In Accordingly, potentiality as the possibility for future energetic acts is counted as part a constant interchange between the violent action at the moment of explosion and its of the work structure, as well as transformation as momentary form and the trace of almost invisible smoldering advance, the artist reconstructs time and space and past events. Dynamic and static moments, past and future, are not seen as opposites enables the technically and precisely measurable dimensions to become a thoroughly but as aspects of one and the same work. new subjective experience: as a dense concentration and an endlessly perceptible expansion, as violent moment and tortuous duration. Peculiar to the works is a chronology of the configuration process, whose single phases relate very precisely the one to the other. Thus the conception is mentally “There are very slow processes in my works. A fuse can also be slow. And then reconstructible and just as conceivable as the action and the traces of the elapsed there are very swift processes. Something falls to the ground, bursts or explodes or process are rationally deducible from the potential inherent in an event. Every work, ignites. Behind this lies the phenomenon of sudden force. A change of state fasci- despite the physical presence of the objects used, forces the imagination to move nates me no end. I.e., with a slow movement the sudden reversal, as with a sudden from the visual to the conceptual and operates on the difference between the explosion following the slow burn of a fuse. That is a sculpture, a time sculpture, a concretely percei-vable and the removal of precisely this perception and the combination of very slow and very fast.” 5 reconstruction of the perceived in the imagination: “It is the very transparency of the events that allows the factuality of what happens seem unreal. In the process of a “Action with a Fuse”: this subdued sculpture does not only structure time and space direct visual recognition there lurks an irrational doubt of the actual intelligibility of in concise form as a process of leave-taking, Roman Signer also sees it as a metaphor things.”3 for the road, as an epitome of the journey through life. It encompasses the meditative and the eruptive, the timeless and the transitory, and it becomes for the artist, who is In strong contrast to the tradition of Process Art, the artist himself defines the moment in constant attendance during the process, a marginal experience psychically and of change as a sculptural occurrence. In the link between past and future he determi- physically. He succeeds in organizing space into an uncommon dimension by introduc-

32 ing the dimension of time. But beyond this, Roman Signer translates a basic problem and it continues to do so after the official opening. of classical sculpture – space as the encompassment of voids and volumes – onto a “Cabin” takes its place in a long row of works such as “Self-portrait from Weight and different level; its traditional monumental character is suspended in an inclusive Height of Fall” (1972), “Figure” (1988), “Hand” (1992) and “Portrait Gallery” (1993). total construct: The dematerialization of the object and temporal expansion lead to a Repeatedly the artist (or more exactly his body or parts of his body) leaves behind complete dissolution of sculpture’s static and object-bound state into a comprehensive traces that are portrayed in negative form and that bear witness to his presence, i.e. time-space structure. absence. In the “Portrait Gallery”, in a protective suit and helmet, he bends over a metal barrel and simultaneously ignites a charge with his foot. A violent bang and white paint shoots up like a fountain, sprays helmet and suit, robbing the artist of his view Cabin: the artist is present and absent through the visor. This is repeated three times, each time with another barrel that alternates between white and black paint. The portrait has lost its face, its actual A fulminant point of departure: immediately on entering the Swiss Pavilion, one purpose. The action becomes a puzzling ritual, a kind of self-destructive blinding and encounters a ghostly likeness of a man, imprisoned in a life-size crate. The artist is is preserved only in the sprayed barrels and the accompanying photo sequence. The present and absent: for the entry hall Roman Signer designed a “Cabin” that playfulness of the moment is frozen to a ghostly image. With the vigorousness of this highlights the very focus of his artistic work. If at previous Biennale contributions one gesture, the idea of a portrait is intensified to a strident “moment-monument”: a entered the pavilion through the spacious entrance and, passing the reception desk, metaphor for man at the end of the 20th century? It is the same oppressive feeling moved towards a covered pathway into the courtyard and the exhibition rooms, that “Cabin” – despite its friendly welcoming gesture – leaves us with. Roman Signer has disturbed this calm progression with his intervention. For it is exactly the open courtyard that is the site of a work whose immediate presence is hard to ignore. Bicycle: the dynamic and static

“Cabin” (1999) is a simple wooden crate (3.20 m long, 2 m high, 1.40 m wide) “In my youth these bicycles carried me over hill or mountain, and then I rode around whose open end faces the pavilion entrance. Its exterior recalls the neutral geometric the woods and fields. That fascinated me. In 1982 I had an exhibition in Utrecht, volume of Minimal Art, though a single glance inside reveals the fundamental Holland; perhaps the bicyclists there greatly impressed me. There is yet an earlier difference to minimalist purism. At the back of the crate the artist has placed a table experience that had a lasting effect: I had the good fortune once to be invited to and chair, in the front a wooden beam, spanned between floor and ceiling, on which Peking to visit a friend, and I rode around Peking on a bicycle for two weeks. […] three cans filled with black paint are fixed at a tilt. They have been fitted with blasting The first work with a bicycle I began in 1982/83. The photos I took of it were meant caps and connected to each other. The artist, in protective clothing and a helmet, is only for me. I rode around two columns and called it sculpture.” 6 seated at the table with his hands on the tabletop. An explosive charge ignites the caps simultaneously: with a violent bang paint shoots out of the cans like volcanic magma, “Yellow Ribbon” was the name of the bicycle work that Roman Signer had created in sprays the interior of the cabin, while the human body and table on the back wall and 1982 for the then derelict Kunstmuseum St. Gallen. He rode around two monumental the hands on the table are reproduced as negatives. Once again Roman Signer pillars several times, whereby a yellow plastic ribbon, a roll of which was attached to confronts counter-movements: the violent, even potentially dangerous explosion aimed his bicycle rack, unwound and wrapped itself around the pillars, marking the path just at his person – a short flash – followed immediately by a spray of paint that taken. Movement in space thus becomes visible and materializes as spatial structure, completely blinds his field of vision, and then the paint’s slow drying process. Without as sculpture. Two years later the artist expanded this conception for an exhibition at the application of a single brushstroke, the “explosive” action becomes painting in the Städtische Bodensee-Museum Friedrichshafen, by unwinding a ribbon from a space, a portrait of the artist caught in his own work. At the same time, with bicycle circling around four pillars, thereby fencing off a square of space. The bicycle, backhanded humor, Roman Signer takes the entrance to the pavilion as theme: the leant against a pillar at the conclusion of the process and the ribbon wrapped several artist is present at the reception desk; his shadowy image seems to greet every visitor times around the columns, enable the course of action to be reconstructed. This personally, basic setup Roman Signer has repeated in the courtyard of the Swiss Pavilion: 33 “Bicycle” (1982/1999). This time, mounted on his bike, he circled only around one a film of spray, and the water falls back into the tank. From there it runs out through a single pillar. The riding movement is thus made visible, but becomes fixated at one pipe at the end of the cargo deck in a gentle arc to become a rivulet on the ground point in space to a three-dimensional image of complete immobility. The dynamics of that disappears into the gutters of the sewage system. In this work the virtuoso artist the process is even more clearly suspended in the static concentration of a compact has sculpted water as liquid object, has visualized its inherent properties through its object and produces an impression of senselessness, whose meaning lies exactly in varied states of being: powerful jet, swollen drops, a fleeting fan of spray, moving the unbridgeable contradiction between dynamic and static and evolves into that surface, meandering rivulet… But a further dimension, unique to the respective “form” singular quality of the absurd that is so characteristic of Roman Signer’s work. This of water, also comes into its own and is clearly perceptible, namely its sound struc- absurdity, staged in a Venice free of bicycles, makes its point, literally and figuratively. ture: fine spray, drops, splashes… And like a sounding board, the closed tin roof of the vehicle amplifies the different tonal qualities. What is common to both the water and the sound is their progressive course in time. This progression, in turn, comprises Fontana di Piaggio: monument to movement different velocities – from fast movements, like the water when it shoots out of the nozzle, to the slow flow onto the ground. At the same time, the “Fontana di Piaggio” “My first work with a Piaggio was in connection with water. I placed a barrel of opens up another, a virtual aspect of time, namely the voyage from the fountain’s one water on the roof of the loading area. The water ran in a thin arc out of a hole bored location to the next, from Roman Signer’s residence in St. Gallen via the into the barrel onto the street. After which I drew a rivulet with the Piaggio around presentations in Langenhagen and Münster to Venice, where the fountain is being the region. That was a portable wellspring, a ‘Fontana di Piaggio’.” 7 parked in the courtyard of the Pavilion for the duration of the Biennale as a, so to speak, permanent event.9 Once again Roman Signer’s “Fontana di Piaggio” has taken up its travels: after it was in Langenhagen for eight days in 1995 and could be seen in Münster at different In “Fontana di Piaggio” the tradition of the fountain that reaches far back in cultural locations during the 1997 “Skulptur.Projekte”, the mobile fountain is now temporarily history encounters a comparatively new cultural phenomenon, motorized traffic. Before paying a longer visit to Venice, parked in the courtyard of the Swiss Pavilion. The the introduction of water mains, the spring was a centrally located fixture. One went sequence of sites, i.e., the indicated route, is an essential aspect of the work, which there to fetch water for the household or assembled there for meetings. Where there underlines its mobility and, at the same time, stresses the absurdity of a traveling was a spring, there was life. So that very early on these sites were singled out, and fountain: “Actually it’s a case of a rolling fountain. […] I imagine a construction in ever more elaborate fountain systems were designed. Yet despite the movement of which a strong jet of water splashes against the roof of the Piaggio’s cab. The water, the fountain is characterized by moments of collection, of standstill – in contrast whole cab would begin to resound. That would somehow be a mobile fountain, to a vehicle, which serves locomotion, a constant change in location. And it is this which one could park at any desired location.” 8 very incompatibility between the stationary fountain and the dynamic means of locomotion that the work aims to underline: a refreshing expansion and a contemporary “Fontana di Piaggio” consists, as the title suggests, of a water-blue, three-wheeled reformulation of the old fountain tradition10 on the one hand, while, on the other, erect- transport vehicle with a clattering two-stroke motor, under the brand name Piaggio. ing a recondite monument to the Piaggio, that noble archetype of motorized locomo- It serves to transport goods in the narrow alleyways, above all, of Italian cities. This tion. The love declared here to water and to the Piaggio is characteristic for Roman vehicle, which still today is manufactured in Genoa, archetype for a small delivery truck Signer’s close, even intimate, relation to his materials, his “objects”. with no superfluous luxury, is made up of only a small driver’s cab and a tin hood above the cargo area. The artist has transformed this simple and unique conveyance “First it’s necessary to know that the Piaggio is a very useful means of locomotion, into a mobile wellspring, by lining the cargo area with a metal tank. A black rubber in order to understand what its other possibilities are. And yet it’s not easy for me to hose leads water from an outside hydrant into a nozzle in the truck, where it is explain what the Piaggio means to me exactly. […] The Piaggio is a wonderful compressed and shoots up under high pressure onto the inside of the roof and drums construction, I would go so far as to say ingenious. If we had to go on foot, such an against the tin. The bundled water jet is dispersed into countless drops of water and idea would perhaps occur to us.” 11

34 Thus Roman Signer has dedicated several works to this chugging vehicle, such as “simultaneously”, but with minimal shifts in time. The camera visually captures that “Piaggio” (1992) or “Piaggio with Barrel” (1993). Beyond this private reference, which, because of the enormous speeds involved, escapes the eye. The technical however, “Fontana di Piaggio” at its present site points to another cultural and medium replaces visual perception and enables a fine differentiation between several historical aspect. Brought by ship and parked in the Giardini, the monument to the actually identical temporal processes. Thus technology surpasses the human eye, a Piaggio can also be understood as a monument to Genoa. That city, in which this fact that opens up frightening perspectives. unique three-wheeled vehicle is still today manufactured, was once an important trading power and the historic rival of “la Serenissima” in the Mediterranean… And if The elements and materials used provide an extraordinary potential for intellectual there is one place in Italy where the Piaggio does not pervade everyday city life, then it amplification. The sphere, the perfect sculptural form, calls up contradictory associa- is certainly Venice, the very place where Roman Signer has with his “fontana” erected tions: concentration and movement, the playful and the warlike. Was not the arsenal a monument to of the mighty Venetian fleet located near today’s Giardini? The blue color, although the automobile and to water that is just as complex as it is paradoxical: “Signer is characteristic for Roman Signer’s preference for red and blue, produces a pictoriality without qualification a virtuoso of complex simplicity, irony, and absurdity: slapstick at that counteracts the iron and for this reason develops an autonomous, visual poetry. the level of the sublime.”12 The hard metal, in turn, is set against the malleable material of clay. This material that is basic to sculptural figuration calls to mind classical craftsmanship and the shaping of objects from an unstructured mass. With a quiet irony Roman Signer, in the Simultaneous: three-dimensional formation procedure he set into motion, seems to be commenting on the traditional idea of sculpture, especially since the final form results from a process that is, in the end, not Contrary to the cheerfully bubbling “Fontana di Piaggio”, the installations in the under complete control, i.e., open to chance: “It was never enough for me to show Swiss Pavilion radiate an uncommon tranquility. And yet these works too, especially something that is finished; I always sought change. Whether I introduce it myself or the installation “Simultaneous” (1999), have been preceded by a violent event. leave it to nature to do so. […] It is all about a work process in the same sense as a sculptor striking a chip from a block of marble.”13 The weightless architecture of the pavilion with its elegant ceiling construction is linked by Roman Signer to the severe order of the floor tiles through a work that As so often in Roman Signer’s work, aesthetic decisions are restricted to the visualizes the moment of free fall. For this purpose the artist takes advantage of the predetermined conditions under which the form, more or less, takes shape on its skylight construction from which to hang 117 heavy, blue, iron balls. In a regular grid own. This potential for form-finding and the conservation of the form found is of 9 times 13 elements, they are attached by strings to a metal rod structure, each something the artist has tested from his earliest works in 1972: “Self-portrait from string of which has been prepared with a blasting cap. Under every ball a clay block Weight and Height of Fall”. This is not a portrait in the conventional sense; the work has been placed on the floor, which together also make up a field of 9 times 13 is the result of a process: the artist jumped from a height of 45 centimeters onto a squares, thus mirroring the ceiling construction. block of damp clay, leaving behind two clear footprints as traces. This early self- At a simultaneous charge, all the strings are burnt through: the balls fall simultaneously portrait literally determines the artistic site and manifests, as “Cabin” does, presence on the blocks and bury themselves in the clay, which slowly dries and hardens, and non-presence. Also just as mentally present is the multiple fall that preceded stamped by the two events of “falling” and “ramming”. The brief burning action and “Simultaneous”. the rapid fall are followed by the slow drying out of the molded clay forms. Once again the event can be mentally reconstructed from the traces left by the expired process: the singed remains of the strings hanging from the ceiling, the iron balls Blue Barrel: swathe through the field embedded in the clay blocks. The whole occurrence was video taped and is shown in slow-motion. The taping of the event throws a playful doubt on the original mental From the installation in the large exhibition hall a narrow passage leads into the smaller image, since the balls do in fact not fall, as the title of the work states, sculpture room. This connecting tract serves, for one, as a projection room for showing

35 video documentaries on the artist’s work. And, two, Roman Signer uses the corridor procedures or explosive events that are able to unleash the most diversified layers of as a starting ramp for the installation in the final hall. The artist reacted to the meaning inherent in the thing-world. By means of this artistic transformation, the combination of given architectural structures – long corridor and square room – in the familiar suddenly appears alien, a normal function senseless or absurd. Roman installation “Blue Barrel” (1999), in which a forceful energy meets a concentrated Signer’s work makes the everyday world visible as something ambiguously amusing field: a ramp has been installed in the corridor, from which a blue barrel filled with that can turn inscrutable or frightening. water is rolled through the door and into the room. This has been fitted out with plywood flooring onto which thousands of super-thin wooden poles, one meter high, This rich pictorial and metaphorical potential for associations is inherent in the things have been erected. The massive barrel is sent on its way through this stubbly field, themselves. It is this circumstance exactly that sets Roman Signer’s oeuvre off from cutting itself a path as it bowls over the fragile poles. The processes of rolling and of the traditions of Process Art. If the so-called New Sculpture at the end of the 60s bowling over remain visible as a track through the field. sought to repress possible levels of meaning in favor of the inner-dynamism of pure materials and the autonomy of form, Roman Signer allows concise archetypical images Roman Signer has repeatedly created installations in which a moving force is directed and diverse visual metaphors their right to exist once more. His materials are infused at a static field – the last time in the spring of 1999 with a “Sand Installation” in with practical experience; they are closely tied to his own biography, to memories of “haus bill”. Here he had lined a small exhibition room with a layer of sand, then used a his childhood in Appenzell, of the power of the waters of the Sitter and of the snow shovel to clear the way from the door to the window opposite and left the tool neighboring artisan workshops. behind (as a memento of the process) by placing it in front of the view from the window. But the moment of action can also be set up to encounter a second action. “I must confront the transitory. Perhaps it is a feeling that I carry within me for In 1993 at the Kunsthalle Wil, the artist set off a blast that sent barrels from two tragedy, for the absurd, the senseless and the useless that we humans inflict.”14 By opposite ramps to collide together. The forward movement was stopped abruptly on the introduction of the dimension of time, by visualizing the passing of time, his works collision; the two barrels set off from different directions and came to a standstill. The become actual moment-sculptures, become, so to speak, contemporary Vanitas artist simulated a crash, an everyday event in our mobile world, in a laboratory test symbols: “The drops, the explosions mark moments in which no one can exist.”15 At and made it a general symbol of destruction. In contrast to this violent collision, the this point, suspended between presence and absence, the artist creates ephemeral installation “Blue Barrel” is characterized more by a muted poetry. It produces images as well as binding, absurd as well as impressive emblems of constructive energies that recall children rolling around in high grass or mighty harvesting machines cutting and destructive forces. a broad swathe through a golden field of wheat. With minimal means, only by “empowering” the profane thing-world, does Roman Signer’s work make a new form of metaphor possible that is exemplary for contem- His Thing World: pictures and metaphors porary art. His oeuvre starts with the tradition of Process Art and links it to contemporary strategies, to the much-cited hybrids of art and life. The unbroken “Cabin”, “Bicycle with Yellow Ribbon”, “Fontana di Piaggio”, “Simultaneous”, “Blue fascination of his work for today’s generation of artists lies in how radical his artistic Barrel” – Roman Signer’s titles have an uncommonly sober ring. Sobriety also de- exploration is and in the way he has decisively redefined the concept of sculpture. scribes the objects the artist uses in his sculptures, their elementary character and For Roman Signer does not only bring the new dimension of time to sculpture – by their outright economy: wooden crate with table and chair, bicycle, plastic ribbon, introducing real-time to art, he has bound it back to life – he has opened up sculpture water, Piaggio, blue spheres, clay blocks, a blue barrel, wooden poles. These list (with to crucial metaphoric and existential dimensions. These latter become condensed in few exceptions, namely, kayak, rocket, helicopter, ventilator) the whole of his the artistic event, in a bodily confrontation with the self-staged destructive as well as repertoire. They all seem familiar and they all maintain an immediate and constructive forces of nature. In such works – of which “Cabin” is a model – the unspectacular relation to the world. However, Roman Signer seldom uses “his” potential is released at the instant of explosion and the past consolidated to a objects in their normal functions, but exposes them deliberately to complex moment.

36 13 Roman Signer in conversation with Gerhard Mack, see fn. 4, p 14. 14 The challenge to natural forces, the direct confrontation with danger is what the artist Ibid., p 15. 15 Ibid., p 10. himself diagnosed as an addiction: “I am interested in danger, in standing close to 16 See fn. 2, p 90. danger. Somehow it is like an addiction, I simply must experience it, must go through this tunnel, through the risk, through the eye of the needle.”16

Triggered by the immediate risk inherent in the artistic event and decisively molded by concrete, Dasein experience, Roman Signer has tightly packed and existentially charged his work accordingly. In the precise choice of his objects that are infused with experience and in the sculpture that has the power to explode dimensions, contemporary three-dimensional thinking is linked to consummated life. Roman Signer’s oeuvre is defined at the interface between contemporary sculpture and existential symbol, and it is this singular overlap that plays a pioneering role in what are the complex strategies present in today’s art.

Konrad Bitterli

Notes

1 Roman Signer in conversation with Susanne Jacob in: Skulptur.Projekte in Münster 1997, Kaspar König (ed.), Münster: Westfälisches Landesmuseum (1997) p 391. 2 Roman Signer in conversation with Lutz Tittel in: Treffpunkt Bodensee: Drei Länder – drei Künstler, Lutz Tittel (ed.), Friedrichshafen: Städtisches Bodensee-Museum (1984) p 83. 3 Roland Wäspe: “Spuren der Zeit. Zur kunsthistorischen Situierung der Skulptur von Roman Signer”, in: Konrad Bitterli, Lutz Tittel, Roland Wäspe: Roman Signer. Skulptur, St. Gallen: Kunstmuseum (1993) p 22. 4 Gerhard Mack: “Roman Signer” in: Kritisches Lexikon der Gegenwartskunst, Munich, no. 30/1995, p 6. 5 See fn. 2, p 84. 6 See fn. 2, p 83. 7 Roman Signer in conversation with Peter Liechti in: Roman Signer. Mon voyage au Creux de l’Enfer, Laurence Gateau (ed.), Thiers: Creux de l’Enfer, Centre d’art contemporain (1993) p 6. 8 Ibid., p 7. 9 The same Piaggio had already been used in other works so that the voyage should be expanded to include Thun and Thiers. See ibid. 10 Roman Signer had already executed a series of water projects in public places and brought the tradition of the fountain up to date. See Elisabeth Keller-Schweizer: Roman Signer. NICHT ausgeführte Projekte für den öffentlichen Raum, St. Gallen: Typotron (1994). 11 See fn. 7, pp 6 & 11. 12 Colin de Land: “Learning Signer” in Parkett, no. 45/1995, p 153.

37 BIOGRAPHIE / BIOGRAPHIE / BIOGRAFIA / BIOGRAPHY “Works”, Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills “Equilibre – Gleichgewicht, ƒÄquivalenz und Harmonie in der Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts”, Aargauer Kunsthaus, “Ich war hier – I was here”, The Swiss Institute, NewYork Aarau 1938 geboren in Appenzell 1998 “Skulptur, Fotografie, Video”, Galerie Barbara Weiss, lebt und arbeitet in St. Gallen Berlin 1994 “Heart of Darkness”, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterloo 1995 “Zeichen und Wunder. Niko Pirosmani (1862–1918) Born in Appenzell 1999 Galerie Hauser & Wirth, Zürich und die Kunst der Gegenwart”, Kunsthaus Zürich; Lives and works in St. Gallen “Wasserinstallation” Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Wiener Secession, Wien Compostela Môtiers 95. art en plein air, Môtiers “Shift”, De Appel, Amsterdam AUSSTELLUNGEN / EXPOSITIONS / MOSTRE / EXHIBITIONS “Self-Construction”, Museum moderner Kunst und Stiftung Ludwig, 20-er Haus, Wien Gruppenausstellungen (Auswahl) / Selected Group Exhibitions 1996 “Helvetia Sounds”, Galerie der Stadt Esslingen, Villa Einzelausstellungen (Auswahl) / Selected Solo Exhibitions Merkel, Esslingen 1973 “Kunstmacher 73. 60 unter 35”, Museum zu Aller- “Im Kunstlicht. Photographie im 20. Jahrhundert aus den heiligen, Schaffhausen 1973 “Objekte, Konstruktionen”, Galerie Lock, St. Gallen Sammlungen im Kunsthaus Zürich”, Kunsthaus Zürich 1975 6. Schweizerische Plastikausstellung, Biel 1980 Kleiner Ausstellungsraum, Künstlerhaus Hamburg, 1997 “Zeitskulptur. Volumen als Ereignis”, Oberösterreichi- 1978 “Aktualität Vergangenheit”, 3. Biennale der Schweizer sches Landesmuseum, Linz 1981 “Filminstallation”, Kunsthaus Zürich Kunst, Kunstmuseum Winterthur “het drinkglas”, Stichting Leerdam Glasmanifestie, Fort 1982 Museum Hedendaagse Kunst, Utrecht 1980 7. Schweizerische Plastikausstellung, Biel Asperen, Leerdam 1983 “Zeichnungen”, Kunstmuseum Winterthur 1981 “1. Bildhauersymposium Bochum 1979/80 – Stadt und “Voglio vedere le mie montagne. Die Schwerkaft der 1985 “Schnelle Veränderungen”, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart Bildhauerei”, Kunstmuseum Bochum Berge”, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau; Kunsthalle Krems Kunstmuseum des Kantons Thurgau, Kartause Ittingen 1984 “Treffpunkt Bodensee: Drei Länder – drei Künstler”, “Alpenblick. Die zeitgenössische Kunst und das Alpine”, Kunsthalle Wien Galerie Bog Gysin, Dübendorf Städtisches Bodensee-Museum, Friedrichshafen “Skulptur.Projekte in Münster 1997”, Westfälisches Galerie Stampa, Basel 1986 8. Schweizerische Plastikausstellung, Biel Landesmuseum, Münster 1988 “Neue Arbeiten”, Kunsthalle St. Gallen 1987 documenta 8, Kassel 7e semaine internationale de vidéo, Saint-Gervais, Genf 1989 “Skulpturen”, Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen 1988 “Das gläserne U-Boot”, Donaufestival, Krems/Stein 1998 “Grandeur Nature”, Parc départemental de la 1989 “Ressource Kunst. Die Elemente neu gesehen”, Berlin, 1990 American Fine Arts, Galerie Colin de Land, New York Courneuve, Forum culturel de Blanc-Mesnil, Seine-Saint- Saarbrücken, München, Budapest 1992 “Vitesse: 2’000 Mètres/Seconde”, FRI-ART, Centre d'art Denis Môtiers 1989. Exposition suisse de sculpture, Môtiers contemporain, Fribourg The Living Museum, Reykjavík 1990 “Transformations”, Fondation Gulbenkian, Lissabon; “Installationen”, Helmhaus Zürich “Poseidons Auge”, Handelshafen der Stadt Linz Association pour un musée d'art moderne, Genf Le Creux de l'Enfer, Centre d'art contemporain, Thiers “Current Research. Charts, Evidence and Other 1991 “A Swiss Dialectic”, The Renaissance Society, The Documentation”, The Millais Gallery, Southampton Insti- 1993 Raum aktueller Kunst, Wien University of Chicago, Chicago tute, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland Hôtel Saint-Simon, Fonds régional d'art contemporain “Grandes Lignes”, Rencontres Art – Public, Gare de “Unfinished History”, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Poitou-Charentes, Angoulème Paris-Est, Paris “Europa Afrika”, 7. Triennale der Kleinplastik, Forum “Skulptur”, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen 1992 “Frammenti, Interfacce, Intervalli. Paradigmi della Südwest LB, Stuttgart 1994 Europäisches Kulturzentrum, Erfurt frammentazione nell'arte svizzera”, Museo d'arte contemporanea di Villa Croce, Genua 1999 “Provisorium I”, Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht 1995 “Werken”, Het Apollohuis, Eindhoven 1993 “Différentes natures – visions de l'art contemporain”, “Panorama 2000”, Central Museum, Utrecht “Sculptures”, Galerie Art:Concept, Nizza EPAD, Galerie Art 4 und Galerie de l'Esplanade, La “Roman Signer, Tumi Magnusson, Bernard Tagwerker, 1996 Slunkaríki, Isafjördur Défense/Paris Christian Herdeg”, haus bill, Zumikon 1997 “Works”, Goldie Paley Gallery, Moore College of Art and Furkart 1993, Hotel Furkapass, Furkapasshöhe “The Sultans Pool”, Art Focus, Jerusalem Design, Philadelphia “Energy & Elements”, Borealis 6, National Gallery, The Photographer's Gallery, London Reykjavík “Neue Arbeiten”, Galerie Hauser & Wirth, Zürich Steirischer Herbst, Graz

93 BIBLIOGRAPHIE (AUSWAHL) / BIBLIOGRAPHIE (SELECTION) ausgeführte Projekte für den öffentlichen Raum, St. Lissabon: Fondation Gulbenkian; Genf: Association BIBLIOGRAFIA (SELEZIONE) / SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Gallen: Typotron, 1994. pour un musée d'art moderne, p. 19–33. Jörk Rothamel: Roman Signer. Installationen, Erfurt: Jacqueline Burckhardt: “Jan Jedlicka und Roman Signer Europäisches Kulturzentrum in Thüringen, 1994. – Ein Bericht”, in: Stefan Karkow, Carla Zickfeld, Ed.: 1995 Max Wechsler: Roman Signer. Explosion, Natura. Progetto Civitella d'Avigliano '90, Bolsena: Monographien / Monographs Poschiavo/Luzern: Edition Periferia, 1995. Progetto Civitella d’Avigliano, 1990, p. 42–55. 1991 Grandes Lignes. Quand l’art entre en gare, Paris: Gare Marie-Louise Lienhard: Roman Signer. Skizzen, Aarau: de Paris-Est, 1991, p. 48–49. 1973 Alois Hengartner: Roman Signer, St. Gallen: Edition Forum Schlossplatz, 1995. Galerie Lock, 1973. 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