Roman Signer: Work

About

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

�We are proud to present Roman Signer�s first exhibition in Scotland.
We are sure that a wide range of people will enjoy his unconventional approach to making art.�
Fiona Bradley, Director, The Fruitmarket Gallery