ROMAN SIGNER

ROMAN SIGNER
XLVIII. Biennale di Venezia 1999. Svizzera
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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:
Vizekommissär / Vice Commissioner:
Pressebetreuung / Press support:
Photographie / Photography:
Sprengtechnik / Explosive support:
Technische Betreuung / Technical support:
Videotechnik / Video support:
Urs Staub
Konrad Bitterli
Oliver Wick
Stefan Rohner
Günther Schwarz, Roman Signer
Urs Burger, Arthur Clerici, Stanislav Rogowiec, Tiberio Scalbi, Roland Sutter
Aleksandra Signer, Videicompany, Aufdi Aufdermauer, Karin Wegmüller
Katalog / Catalogue
Konzeption / Conception:
Redaktion / Edited by:
Übersetzungen / Translations:
Gestaltung / Design:
Videobilder / Videostills:
Satz, Lithographie / Typesetting, Lithography:
Druck / Printed by:
Einband / Bound by:
Roman Signer, Peter Zimmermann
Konrad Bitterli, Matthias Wohlgemuth
Jeanne Haunschild (e)
Diane de Rahm (f)
Monica Nolli-Meyer (i)
Peter Zimmermann
Aufdi Aufdermauer, Aleksandra Signer
Nievergelt Policom AG, Zürich, Peter Zimmermann Graphic Design, Zürich
Lichtdruck AG, Dielsdorf
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
© 1999 by Bundesamt für Kultur, Bern, Roman Signer, St. Gallen, Konrad Bitterli (Text)
ISBN 3-908617-01-4
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Printed in Switzerland
INHALT / SOMMAIRE / SOMMARIO / CONTENTS
Konrad Bitterli
EREIGNIS-SKULPTUR – Roman Signer an der 48. Biennale in Venedig
.............................................................................
UNE SCULPTURE-EVENEMENT – Roman Signer à la 48e Biennale de Venise
SCULTURA EVENTO – Roman Signer alla XLVIII Biennale di Venezia
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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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
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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
Water is perhaps the most crucial material ingredient in Roman Signer’s work. This
natural element in its many different forms had for him an early fascination in a
childhood spent growing up on the banks of a river often swollen from rain.
Considering Roman Signers intensive artistic exploration of the element water, his
invitation to present this year’s Swiss contribution to the 48th Biennale in the lagoon
city of Venice raises manifold expectations. For the Swiss Pavilion, the artist has
conceived of a dense series of works. Starting with his intense occupation with
Bruno Giacometti’s pavilion architecture and his own repeated encounter with “la
Serenissima”, he has fused site-specific installations with other works into an
ensemble that enables him to link architectural with conceptual space. Inscribed in
the autonomous development of his work, Roman Signer’s Biennale contribution
contains manifold references to the city and its mutable history as well as to the
waters of the lagoon.
“Cabin” (1999), “Bicycle” (1982/99), “Fontana di Piaggio” (1995), “Simultaneous”
(1999), “Blue Barrel” (1999), together with a series of videos, allow a profound
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.
A Process-Art Sculptural Concept
Roman Signer, as he never tires of saying, has always viewed himself as a sculptor.
Even his many actions before an audience – for example the famous closing action to
documenta 8 – he insists on calling sculpture, although they are only momentary:
“I have perhaps a different concept of sculpture. It is one that has gradually
developed from my actions. I have always regarded myself as a sculptor. At issue are
always problems of space, the occurrences in space, lapses of time.” 2
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.,
a minimalist floor sculpture, which brought the lawn into rhythmic interactive relationship with the three-dimensional placement and the intermediate spaces. Yet the
structure was not conceived as a static object, but as the first, provisional stage of a
sculpture in several parts. Equipped with an explosive charge and a blasting cap,
the 300 stacks of paper were brought to a simultaneous explosion: a bang, a hazy
cloud of smoke and 300’000 pages shot up, flapped in the air and transformed the
austere, ground-based artwork into the multi-faceted, flickering, gentle downward
glide of a white wall. For one moment only, the artist had set up an ephemeral
phenomenon in space, a riotously whirling form that sank slowly to earth and alighted
there to become an irregular field of thousands of paper sheets. The original order is
transformed by a violent action into a different state, a chaotic structure. The abrupt
power of the explosion, the propulsion, is followed by a gradual subsidence; the violent
energetic thrust, by a meditative descent. Like a virtuoso, the artist stages the most
diverse, partly counteractive movements and energies: upward drive versus downward
glide, contraction versus expansion.
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
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
three-dimensional basic research, Roman Signer dedicated himself to the inherent
energy potentials of nature and the physical properties of such familiar things as
sand, stone or water. But he also translated fire, rockets and explosions into ephemeral structures or used their respective energy potential to deform or transform tables,
chairs, beds, stools, bicycles, model helicopters or barrels. Over the years these
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everyday objects formed a precisely selected, numerically manageable repertoire, which
the artist could fall back on in ever new combinations. His transitory sculptures have
been recorded in photos and film, whereby these media have in time taken on a life of
their own.
In Roman Signer’s work an artistic attitude emerges that decisively contributes to the
traditions of Process Art and that fundamentally redefines the arrangement of sculptural forms. His sculptural concept deconstructs the conventional art categories
through the moment of action, the expansion into space and the dimension of time.
Space and Time: the structure of the work
Roman Signer’s whole production is based on a specific work structure. It is subdivided, like states of aggregation, into three clearly defined phases: 1. the basic starting
point that incorporates potential form changes: in the case of the documenta action,
the lining up of the paper stacks, 2. the actual process, the change of this potential
into action: the papers’ upward propulsion and their glide downward, 3. the traces of
the elapsed process: the papers scattered over the ground as total form.
Accordingly, potentiality as the possibility for future energetic acts is counted as part
of the work structure, as well as transformation as momentary form and the trace of
past events. Dynamic and static moments, past and future, are not seen as opposites
but as aspects of one and the same work.
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
reconstructible and just as conceivable as the action and the traces of the elapsed
process are rationally deducible from the potential inherent in an event. Every work,
despite the physical presence of the objects used, forces the imagination to move
from the visual to the conceptual and operates on the difference between the
concretely percei-vable and the removal of precisely this perception and the
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
direct visual recognition there lurks an irrational doubt of the actual intelligibility of
things.” 3
In strong contrast to the tradition of Process Art, the artist himself defines the moment
of change as a sculptural occurrence. In the link between past and future he determi32
nes time as an inscribed dimension of sculptural form. Roman Signer’s oeuvre reveals
a finely differentiated spectrum of temporal structures, beginning with the “Action with
a Fuse” (1989) lasting 35 days via the finely orchestrated multi-part action on the
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
installation “Vitesse: 2’000 mètres/seconde” (1992): “Sequence, simultaneity,
duration, instantaneity, continuity, consolidation and rhythm shape the course of an
entire compendium from modes of the temporal.” 4
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
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
from his birthplace Appenzell to St. Gallen where he now lives. The fuse was laid
along the train tracks in standard lengths of 100 meters that were then joined
together by metal explosive devices filled with black powder. The flame smoldered
inside of the fuse, insulated from the damp, and only a fine, hardly discernible cloud
of smoke hinted at its calm advance forwards. The slow burn ignited a tongue of
flame at the junctures, before it then quietly ate its way through the rest of the fuse. In
a constant interchange between the violent action at the moment of explosion and its
almost invisible smoldering advance, the artist reconstructs time and space and
enables the technically and precisely measurable dimensions to become a thoroughly
new subjective experience: as a dense concentration and an endlessly perceptible
expansion, as violent moment and tortuous duration.
“There are very slow processes in my works. A fuse can also be slow. And then
there are very swift processes. Something falls to the ground, bursts or explodes or
ignites. Behind this lies the phenomenon of sudden force. A change of state fascinates me no end. I.e., with a slow movement the sudden reversal, as with a sudden
explosion following the slow burn of a fuse. That is a sculpture, a time sculpture, a
combination of very slow and very fast.” 5
“Action with a Fuse”: this subdued sculpture does not only structure time and space
in concise form as a process of leave-taking, Roman Signer also sees it as a metaphor
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 constant attendance during the process, a marginal experience psychically and
physically. He succeeds in organizing space into an uncommon dimension by introduc-
ing the dimension of time. But beyond this, Roman Signer translates a basic problem
of classical sculpture – space as the encompassment of voids and volumes – onto a
different level; its traditional monumental character is suspended in an inclusive
total construct: The dematerialization of the object and temporal expansion lead to a
complete dissolution of sculpture’s static and object-bound state into a comprehensive
time-space structure.
Cabin: the artist is present and absent
A fulminant point of departure: immediately on entering the Swiss Pavilion, one
encounters a ghostly likeness of a man, imprisoned in a life-size crate. The artist is
present and absent: for the entry hall Roman Signer designed a “Cabin” that
highlights the very focus of his artistic work. If at previous Biennale contributions one
entered the pavilion through the spacious entrance and, passing the reception desk,
moved towards a covered pathway into the courtyard and the exhibition rooms,
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.
“Cabin” (1999) is a simple wooden crate (3.20 m long, 2 m high, 1.40 m wide)
whose open end faces the pavilion entrance. Its exterior recalls the neutral geometric
volume of Minimal Art, though a single glance inside reveals the fundamental
difference to minimalist purism. At the back of the crate the artist has placed a table
and chair, in the front a wooden beam, spanned between floor and ceiling, on which
three cans filled with black paint are fixed at a tilt. They have been fitted with blasting
caps and connected to each other. The artist, in protective clothing and a helmet, is
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,
sprays the interior of the cabin, while the human body and table on the back wall and
the hands on the table are reproduced as negatives. Once again Roman Signer
confronts counter-movements: the violent, even potentially dangerous explosion aimed
at his person – a short flash – followed immediately by a spray of paint that
completely blinds his field of vision, and then the paint’s slow drying process. Without
the application of a single brushstroke, the “explosive” action becomes painting in
space, a portrait of the artist caught in his own work. At the same time, with
backhanded humor, Roman Signer takes the entrance to the pavilion as theme: the
artist is present at the reception desk; his shadowy image seems to greet every visitor
personally,
and it continues to do so after the official opening.
“Cabin” takes its place in a long row of works such as “Self-portrait from Weight and
Height of Fall” (1972), “Figure” (1988), “Hand” (1992) and “Portrait Gallery” (1993).
Repeatedly the artist (or more exactly his body or parts of his body) leaves behind
traces that are portrayed in negative form and that bear witness to his presence, i.e.
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
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
purpose. The action becomes a puzzling ritual, a kind of self-destructive blinding and
is preserved only in the sprayed barrels and the accompanying photo sequence. The
playfulness of the moment is frozen to a ghostly image. With the vigorousness of this
gesture, the idea of a portrait is intensified to a strident “moment-monument”: a
metaphor for man at the end of the 20th century? It is the same oppressive feeling
that “Cabin” – despite its friendly welcoming gesture – leaves us with.
Bicycle: the dynamic and static
“In my youth these bicycles carried me over hill or mountain, and then I rode around
the woods and fields. That fascinated me. In 1982 I had an exhibition in Utrecht,
Holland; perhaps the bicyclists there greatly impressed me. There is yet an earlier
experience that had a lasting effect: I had the good fortune once to be invited to
Peking to visit a friend, and I rode around Peking on a bicycle for two weeks. […]
The first work with a bicycle I began in 1982/83. The photos I took of it were meant
only for me. I rode around two columns and called it sculpture.” 6
“Yellow Ribbon” was the name of the bicycle work that Roman Signer had created in
1982 for the then derelict Kunstmuseum St. Gallen. He rode around two monumental
pillars several times, whereby a yellow plastic ribbon, a roll of which was attached to
his bicycle rack, unwound and wrapped itself around the pillars, marking the path just
taken. Movement in space thus becomes visible and materializes as spatial structure,
as sculpture. Two years later the artist expanded this conception for an exhibition at
the Städtische Bodensee-Museum Friedrichshafen, by unwinding a ribbon from a
bicycle circling around four pillars, thereby fencing off a square of space. The bicycle,
leant against a pillar at the conclusion of the process and the ribbon wrapped several
times around the columns, enable the course of action to be reconstructed. This
basic setup Roman Signer has repeated in the courtyard of the Swiss Pavilion:
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“Bicycle” (1982/1999). This time, mounted on his bike, he circled only around one
single pillar. The riding movement is thus made visible, but becomes fixated at one
point in space to a three-dimensional image of complete immobility. The dynamics of
the process is even more clearly suspended in the static concentration of a compact
object and produces an impression of senselessness, whose meaning lies exactly in
the unbridgeable contradiction between dynamic and static and evolves into that
singular quality of the absurd that is so characteristic of Roman Signer’s work. This
absurdity, staged in a Venice free of bicycles, makes its point, literally and figuratively.
Fontana di Piaggio: monument to movement
“My first work with a Piaggio was in connection with water. I placed a barrel of
water on the roof of the loading area. The water ran in a thin arc out of a hole bored
into the barrel onto the street. After which I drew a rivulet with the Piaggio around
the region. That was a portable wellspring, a ‘Fontana di Piaggio’.” 7
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
locations during the 1997 “Skulptur.Projekte”, the mobile fountain is now temporarily
paying a longer visit to Venice, parked in the courtyard of the Swiss Pavilion. The
sequence of sites, i.e., the indicated route, is an essential aspect of the work, which
underlines its mobility and, at the same time, stresses the absurdity of a traveling
fountain: “Actually it’s a case of a rolling fountain. […] I imagine a construction in
which a strong jet of water splashes against the roof of the Piaggio’s cab. The
whole cab would begin to resound. That would somehow be a mobile fountain,
which one could park at any desired location.” 8
“Fontana di Piaggio” consists, as the title suggests, of a water-blue, three-wheeled
transport vehicle with a clattering two-stroke motor, under the brand name Piaggio.
It serves to transport goods in the narrow alleyways, above all, of Italian cities. This
vehicle, which still today is manufactured in Genoa, archetype for a small delivery truck
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
into a mobile wellspring, by lining the cargo area with a metal tank. A black rubber
hose leads water from an outside hydrant into a nozzle in the truck, where it is
compressed and shoots up under high pressure onto the inside of the roof and drums
against the tin. The bundled water jet is dispersed into countless drops of water and
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a film of spray, and the water falls back into the tank. From there it runs out through a
pipe at the end of the cargo deck in a gentle arc to become a rivulet on the ground
that disappears into the gutters of the sewage system. In this work the virtuoso artist
has sculpted water as liquid object, has visualized its inherent properties through its
varied states of being: powerful jet, swollen drops, a fleeting fan of spray, moving
surface, meandering rivulet… But a further dimension, unique to the respective “form”
of water, also comes into its own and is clearly perceptible, namely its sound structure: 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
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”
opens up another, a virtual aspect of time, namely the voyage from the fountain’s one
location to the next, from Roman Signer’s residence in St. Gallen via the
presentations in Langenhagen and Münster to Venice, where the fountain is being
parked in the courtyard of the Pavilion for the duration of the Biennale as a, so to
speak, permanent event.9
In “Fontana di Piaggio” the tradition of the fountain that reaches far back in cultural
history encounters a comparatively new cultural phenomenon, motorized traffic. Before
the introduction of water mains, the spring was a centrally located fixture. One went
there to fetch water for the household or assembled there for meetings. Where there
was a spring, there was life. So that very early on these sites were singled out, and
ever more elaborate fountain systems were designed. Yet despite the movement of
water, the fountain is characterized by moments of collection, of standstill – in contrast
to a vehicle, which serves locomotion, a constant change in location. And it is this
very incompatibility between the stationary fountain and the dynamic means of locomotion that the work aims to underline: a refreshing expansion and a contemporary
reformulation of the old fountain tradition10 on the one hand, while, on the other, erecting a recondite monument to the Piaggio, that noble archetype of motorized locomotion. The love declared here to water and to the Piaggio is characteristic for Roman
Signer’s close, even intimate, relation to his materials, his “objects”.
“First it’s necessary to know that the Piaggio is a very useful means of locomotion,
in order to understand what its other possibilities are. And yet it’s not easy for me to
explain what the Piaggio means to me exactly. […] The Piaggio is a wonderful
construction, I would go so far as to say ingenious. If we had to go on foot, such an
idea would perhaps occur to us.” 11
Thus Roman Signer has dedicated several works to this chugging vehicle, such as
“Piaggio” (1992) or “Piaggio with Barrel” (1993). Beyond this private reference,
however, “Fontana di Piaggio” at its present site points to another cultural and
historical aspect. Brought by ship and parked in the Giardini, the monument to the
Piaggio can also be understood as a monument to Genoa. That city, in which this
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
there is one place in Italy where the Piaggio does not pervade everyday city life, then it
is certainly Venice, the very place where Roman Signer has with his “fontana” erected
a monument to
the automobile and to water that is just as complex as it is paradoxical: “Signer is
without qualification a virtuoso of complex simplicity, irony, and absurdity: slapstick at
the level of the sublime.”12
Simultaneous: three-dimensional formation
Contrary to the cheerfully bubbling “Fontana di Piaggio”, the installations in the
Swiss Pavilion radiate an uncommon tranquility. And yet these works too, especially
the installation “Simultaneous” (1999), have been preceded by a violent event.
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
visualizes the moment of free fall. For this purpose the artist takes advantage of the
skylight construction from which to hang 117 heavy, blue, iron balls. In a regular grid
of 9 times 13 elements, they are attached by strings to a metal rod structure, each
string of which has been prepared with a blasting cap. Under every ball a clay block
has been placed on the floor, which together also make up a field of 9 times 13
squares, thus mirroring the ceiling construction.
At a simultaneous charge, all the strings are burnt through: the balls fall simultaneously
on the blocks and bury themselves in the clay, which slowly dries and hardens,
stamped by the two events of “falling” and “ramming”. The brief burning action and
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
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
image, since the balls do in fact not fall, as the title of the work states,
“simultaneously”, but with minimal shifts in time. The camera visually captures that
which, because of the enormous speeds involved, escapes the eye. The technical
medium replaces visual perception and enables a fine differentiation between several
actually identical temporal processes. Thus technology surpasses the human eye, a
fact that opens up frightening perspectives.
The elements and materials used provide an extraordinary potential for intellectual
amplification. The sphere, the perfect sculptural form, calls up contradictory associations: concentration and movement, the playful and the warlike. Was not the arsenal
of the mighty Venetian fleet located near today’s Giardini? The blue color, although
characteristic for Roman Signer’s preference for red and blue, produces a pictoriality
that counteracts the iron and for this reason develops an autonomous, visual poetry.
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
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
under complete control, i.e., open to chance: “It was never enough for me to show
something that is finished; I always sought change. Whether I introduce it myself or
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
As so often in Roman Signer’s work, aesthetic decisions are restricted to the
predetermined conditions under which the form, more or less, takes shape on its
own. This potential for form-finding and the conservation of the form found is
something the artist has tested from his earliest works in 1972: “Self-portrait from
Weight and Height of Fall”. This is not a portrait in the conventional sense; the work
is the result of a process: the artist jumped from a height of 45 centimeters onto a
block of damp clay, leaving behind two clear footprints as traces. This early selfportrait literally determines the artistic site and manifests, as “Cabin” does, presence
and non-presence. Also just as mentally present is the multiple fall that preceded
“Simultaneous”.
Blue Barrel: swathe through the field
From the installation in the large exhibition hall a narrow passage leads into the smaller
sculpture room. This connecting tract serves, for one, as a projection room for showing
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video documentaries on the artist’s work. And, two, Roman Signer uses the corridor
as a starting ramp for the installation in the final hall. The artist reacted to the
combination of given architectural structures – long corridor and square room – in the
installation “Blue Barrel” (1999), in which a forceful energy meets a concentrated
field: a ramp has been installed in the corridor, from which a blue barrel filled with
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,
have been erected. The massive barrel is sent on its way through this stubbly field,
cutting itself a path as it bowls over the fragile poles. The processes of rolling and of
bowling over remain visible as a track through the field.
Roman Signer has repeatedly created installations in which a moving force is directed
at a static field – the last time in the spring of 1999 with a “Sand Installation” in
“haus bill”. Here he had lined a small exhibition room with a layer of sand, then used a
snow shovel to clear the way from the door to the window opposite and left the tool
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.
In 1993 at the Kunsthalle Wil, the artist set off a blast that sent barrels from two
opposite ramps to collide together. The forward movement was stopped abruptly on
collision; the two barrels set off from different directions and came to a standstill. The
artist simulated a crash, an everyday event in our mobile world, in a laboratory test
and made it a general symbol of destruction. In contrast to this violent collision, the
installation “Blue Barrel” is characterized more by a muted poetry. It produces images
that recall children rolling around in high grass or mighty harvesting machines cutting
a broad swathe through a golden field of wheat.
His Thing World: pictures and metaphors
“Cabin”, “Bicycle with Yellow Ribbon”, “Fontana di Piaggio”, “Simultaneous”, “Blue
Barrel” – Roman Signer’s titles have an uncommonly sober ring. Sobriety also describes the objects the artist uses in his sculptures, their elementary character and
their outright economy: wooden crate with table and chair, bicycle, plastic ribbon,
water, Piaggio, blue spheres, clay blocks, a blue barrel, wooden poles. These list (with
few exceptions, namely, kayak, rocket, helicopter, ventilator) the whole of his
repertoire. They all seem familiar and they all maintain an immediate and
unspectacular relation to the world. However, Roman Signer seldom uses “his”
objects in their normal functions, but exposes them deliberately to complex
36
procedures or explosive events that are able to unleash the most diversified layers of
meaning inherent in the thing-world. By means of this artistic transformation, the
familiar suddenly appears alien, a normal function senseless or absurd. Roman
Signer’s work makes the everyday world visible as something ambiguously amusing
that can turn inscrutable or frightening.
This rich pictorial and metaphorical potential for associations is inherent in the things
themselves. It is this circumstance exactly that sets Roman Signer’s oeuvre off from
the traditions of Process Art. If the so-called New Sculpture at the end of the 60s
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
and diverse visual metaphors their right to exist once more. His materials are infused
with practical experience; they are closely tied to his own biography, to memories of
his childhood in Appenzell, of the power of the waters of the Sitter and of the
neighboring artisan workshops.
“I must confront the transitory. Perhaps it is a feeling that I carry within me for
tragedy, for the absurd, the senseless and the useless that we humans inflict.” 14 By
the introduction of the dimension of time, by visualizing the passing of time, his works
become actual moment-sculptures, become, so to speak, contemporary Vanitas
symbols: “The drops, the explosions mark moments in which no one can exist.” 15 At
this point, suspended between presence and absence, the artist creates ephemeral
as well as binding, absurd as well as impressive emblems of constructive energies
and destructive forces.
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 contemporary 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
fascination of his work for today’s generation of artists lies in how radical his artistic
exploration is and in the way he has decisively redefined the concept of sculpture.
For Roman Signer does not only bring the new dimension of time to sculpture – by
introducing real-time to art, he has bound it back to life – he has opened up sculpture
to crucial metaphoric and existential dimensions. These latter become condensed in
the artistic event, in a bodily confrontation with the self-staged destructive as well as
constructive forces of nature. In such works – of which “Cabin” is a model – the
potential is released at the instant of explosion and the past consolidated to a
moment.
The challenge to natural forces, the direct confrontation with danger is what the artist
himself diagnosed as an addiction: “I am interested in danger, in standing close to
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
13 Roman Signer in conversation with Gerhard Mack, see fn. 4, p 14.
14 Ibid., p 15.
15 Ibid., p 10.
16 See fn. 2, p 90.
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,
Aarau
“Ich war hier – I was here”, The Swiss Institute, New York
1938
geboren in Appenzell
lebt und arbeitet in St. Gallen
1998
“Skulptur, Fotografie, Video”, Galerie Barbara Weiss,
Berlin
Born in Appenzell
Lives and works in St. Gallen
1999
Galerie Hauser & Wirth, Zürich
1994
“Heart of Darkness”, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterloo
1995
“Zeichen und Wunder. Niko Pirosmani (1862–1918)
und die Kunst der Gegenwart”, Kunsthaus Zürich;
Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de
Compostela
“Wasserinstallation” Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht
Wiener Secession, Wien
Môtiers 95. art en plein air, Môtiers
“Shift”, De Appel, Amsterdam
AUSSTELLUNGEN / EXPOSITIONS / MOSTRE / EXHIBITIONS
Gruppenausstellungen (Auswahl) / Selected Group Exhibitions
Einzelausstellungen (Auswahl) / Selected Solo Exhibitions
“Self-Construction”, Museum moderner Kunst und
Stiftung Ludwig, 20-er Haus, Wien
1996
“Helvetia Sounds”, Galerie der Stadt Esslingen, Villa
Merkel, Esslingen
1973
“Kunstmacher 73. 60 unter 35”, Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen
1975
6. Schweizerische Plastikausstellung, Biel
1978
“Aktualität Vergangenheit”, 3. Biennale der Schweizer
Kunst, Kunstmuseum Winterthur
1980
7. Schweizerische Plastikausstellung, Biel
“het drinkglas”, Stichting Leerdam Glasmanifestie, Fort
Asperen, Leerdam
1981
“1. Bildhauersymposium Bochum 1979/80 – Stadt und
Bildhauerei”, Kunstmuseum Bochum
“Voglio vedere le mie montagne. Die Schwerkaft der
Berge”, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau; Kunsthalle Krems
1984
“Treffpunkt Bodensee: Drei Länder – drei Künstler”,
Städtisches Bodensee-Museum, Friedrichshafen
“Alpenblick. Die zeitgenössische Kunst und das Alpine”,
Kunsthalle Wien
Galerie Stampa, Basel
1986
8. Schweizerische Plastikausstellung, Biel
1988
“Neue Arbeiten”, Kunsthalle St. Gallen
1987
documenta 8, Kassel
“Skulptur.Projekte in Münster 1997”, Westfälisches
Landesmuseum, Münster
1989
“Skulpturen”, Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen
1988
“Das gläserne U-Boot”, Donaufestival, Krems/Stein
1990
American Fine Arts, Galerie Colin de Land, New York
1989
1992
“Vitesse: 2’000 Mètres/Seconde”, FRI-ART, Centre d'art
contemporain, Fribourg
“Ressource Kunst. Die Elemente neu gesehen”, Berlin,
Saarbrücken, München, Budapest
1973
“Objekte, Konstruktionen”, Galerie Lock, St. Gallen
1980
Kleiner Ausstellungsraum, Künstlerhaus Hamburg,
1981
“Filminstallation”, Kunsthaus Zürich
1982
Museum Hedendaagse Kunst, Utrecht
1983
“Zeichnungen”, Kunstmuseum Winterthur
1985
“Schnelle Veränderungen”, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart
Kunstmuseum des Kantons Thurgau, Kartause Ittingen
Galerie Bog Gysin, Dübendorf
“Installationen”, Helmhaus Zürich
Le Creux de l'Enfer, Centre d'art contemporain, Thiers
1993
Raum aktueller Kunst, Wien
1994
Europäisches Kulturzentrum, Erfurt
1995
“Werken”, Het Apollohuis, Eindhoven
“Sculptures”, Galerie Art:Concept, Nizza
1996
Slunkaríki, Isafjördur
1997
“Works”, Goldie Paley Gallery, Moore College of Art and
Design, Philadelphia
1997
“Zeitskulptur. Volumen als Ereignis”, Oberösterreichisches Landesmuseum, Linz
7e semaine internationale de vidéo, Saint-Gervais, Genf
1998
Môtiers 1989. Exposition suisse de sculpture, Môtiers
“Grandeur Nature”, Parc départemental de la
Courneuve, Forum culturel de Blanc-Mesnil, Seine-SaintDenis
The Living Museum, Reykjavík
1990
“Transformations”, Fondation Gulbenkian, Lissabon;
Association pour un musée d'art moderne, Genf
“Poseidons Auge”, Handelshafen der Stadt Linz
1991
“A Swiss Dialectic”, The Renaissance Society, The
University of Chicago, Chicago
“Current Research. Charts, Evidence and Other
Documentation”, The Millais Gallery, Southampton Institute, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland
“Grandes Lignes”, Rencontres Art – Public, Gare de
Paris-Est, Paris
“Unfinished History”, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
Hôtel Saint-Simon, Fonds régional d'art contemporain
Poitou-Charentes, Angoulème
“Skulptur”, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen
“Im Kunstlicht. Photographie im 20. Jahrhundert aus den
Sammlungen im Kunsthaus Zürich”, Kunsthaus Zürich
1992
1993
“Frammenti, Interfacce, Intervalli. Paradigmi della
frammentazione nell'arte svizzera”, Museo d'arte
contemporanea di Villa Croce, Genua
“Europa Afrika”, 7. Triennale der Kleinplastik, Forum
Südwest LB, Stuttgart
1999
“Provisorium I”, Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht
“Différentes natures – visions de l'art contemporain”,
EPAD, Galerie Art 4 und Galerie de l'Esplanade, La
Défense/Paris
“Panorama 2000”, Central Museum, Utrecht
Furkart 1993, Hotel Furkapass, Furkapasshöhe
“The Sultans Pool”, Art Focus, Jerusalem
The Photographer's Gallery, London
“Energy & Elements”, Borealis 6, National Gallery,
Reykjavík
“Neue Arbeiten”, Galerie Hauser & Wirth, Zürich
Steirischer Herbst, Graz
“Roman Signer, Tumi Magnusson, Bernard Tagwerker,
Christian Herdeg”, haus bill, Zumikon
93
BIBLIOGRAPHIE (AUSWAHL) / BIBLIOGRAPHIE (SELECTION)
BIBLIOGRAFIA (SELEZIONE) / SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Monographien / Monographs
1973
1975
1995
Lissabon: Fondation Gulbenkian; Genf: Association
pour un musée d'art moderne, p. 19–33.
Jörk Rothamel: Roman Signer. Installationen, Erfurt:
Europäisches Kulturzentrum in Thüringen, 1994.
Jacqueline Burckhardt: “Jan Jedlicka und Roman Signer
– Ein Bericht”, in: Stefan Karkow, Carla Zickfeld, Ed.:
Natura. Progetto Civitella d'Avigliano '90, Bolsena:
Progetto Civitella d’Avigliano, 1990, p. 42–55.
Max Wechsler: Roman Signer. Explosion,
Poschiavo/Luzern: Edition Periferia, 1995.
Marie-Louise Lienhard: Roman Signer. Skizzen, Aarau:
Forum Schlossplatz, 1995.
Alois Hengartner: Roman Signer, St. Gallen: Edition
Galerie Lock, 1973.
Peter Faessler: Roman Signer, Bernhard Tagwerker.
Gemeinschaftsarbeiten, St. Gallen: Edition Galerie
E. + F. Buchmann, 1975.
ausgeführte Projekte für den öffentlichen Raum, St.
Gallen: Typotron, 1994.
1997
Elsa Longhauser, Ed.: Roman Signer. Works,
Philadelphia: The Galleries at Moore, Moore College of
Art and Design, 1997.
Roman Signer. Zeichnungen 1974–1976, Frauenfeld:
Edition Stäheli und Thoma, 1976.
1998
1978
Roman Signer. Objekte – Zeichnungen, 1971–1978,
St. Gallen: Eigenverlag des Künstlers, 1978.
Roman Signer, Brétigny-sur-Orge: Espace Jules Verne,
Centre d’art contemporain, 1998.
1999
1980
Peter Faessler: Museumsbrief Nr. 40, St. Gallen:
Kunstmuseum, Februar 1980.
Eva Sjuve: Roman Signer. Zeit und Raum in Signers
Skulptur, Lund: Lund University, 1999.
1981
Roman Signer. Zeichnungen, St. Gallen: Eigenverlag
des Künstlers, 1981.
Max Freivogel: Kunstmacher 73. 60 unter 35, Schaffhausen: Museum zu Allerheiligen, 1973, p. 96–97.
1975
6. Schweizerische Plastikausstellung, Biel, 1975,
p. 81, 114.
Wouter Kotte: Roman Signer, Utrecht: Museum
Hedendaagse Kunst, 1982.
1983
Roman Signer. Arbeiten, Projekte, Aktionen, St. Gallen:
Eigenverlag des Künstlers, 1983.
1985
Lutz Tittel: Roman Signer. Schnelle Veränderungen,
Stuttgart: Künstlerhaus, 1985.
1987
Alfons J. Keller, Roland Mattes, Ed.: Das rote Fass von
Roman Signer, St. Gallen, 1987.
1978
Peter Killer: Aktualität Vergangenheit. 3. Biennale der
Schweizer Kunst, Winterthur: Kunstmuseum, 1978, s.p.
1988
Corinne Schatz: Roman Signer. Skulptur, St. Gallen:
Verlag Vexer, 1988.
1980
7. Schweizerische Plastikausstellung, Biel, 1980, s.p.
1981
Ute Dreckmann: “Roman Signer”, in: 1. Bildhauersymposium – Stadt und Bildhauerei, Bochum: Museum
Bochum, 1981, s.p.
1984
Lutz Tittel: “Gespräch mit Roman Signer”, in: Treffpunkt
Bodensee: Drei Länder – drei Künstler, Friedrichshafen:
Städtisches Bodensee-Museum, 1984, p. 81–120.
1986
8. Schweizerische Plastikausstellung, Biel, 1986,
p. 18.
Ute Dreckmann: Roman Signer. Aktion mit 14 Fässern,
Castrop-Rauxel: Forum Castrop-Rauxel, 1992.
1987
Elisabeth Jappe: “Roman Signer”, in: documenta 8,
Kassel, 1987, vol. 2, p. 308.
Laurence Gateau, Ed.: Roman Signer. Mon voyage au
Creux de l’Enfer, Thiers: Creux de l’Enfer, Centre d’art
contemporain, 1993.
1988
Das gläserne U-Boot, Krems: Donaufestival, p.
156–157.
1989
Georg Jappe, Ed.: Ressource Kunst. Die Elemente neu
gesehen, Köln: DuMont Verlag, 1989, p. 168–169.
Roman Signer. Aktion mit einer Zündschnur Appenzell –
St. Gallen, St. Gallen: Eigenverlag des Künstlers, 1989.
1991
Hans-Ulrich Obrist: Roman Signer, Dübendorf: Edition
Galerie Bob Gysin, 1991.
1992
Marie-Louise Lienhard: Roman Signer. Bilder aus Super8-Filmen 1975–1989, Zürich: Verlag Helmhaus/Offizin,
1992.
1993
1976
Konrad Bitterli, Lutz Tittel, Roland Wäspe: Roman
Signer. Skulptur, St. Gallen: Kunstmuseum, 1993 (mit
Werkverzeichnis von 1971 bis 1993).
1994
94
Elisabeth Keller-Schweizer: Roman Signer. NICHT
1990
Hans-Ulrich Obrist: “Roman Signer”, in: Transformations,
“Roman Signer”, in: Différentes natures – visions d’art
contemporain, La Défense/Paris: EPAD, Galerie Art 4
und Galerie de l’Esplanade, 1992, p. 192.
Beat Wismer: “Stationen zum Gleichgewicht”, in:
Equilibre РGleichgewicht, Āquivalenz und Harmonie in
der Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts”, Aarau: Aargauer
Kunsthaus, 1993, p. 218, 237.
Elisabeth Jappe: “Roman Signer”, in: ead.: Performance
– Ritual – Prozess: Handbuch der Aktionskunst in Europa, München: Prestel Verlag, 1993, p. 136–137, 206.
Rudolf Hanhart: Objekte und Zeichnungen. Aspekte
zeitgenössischer Kunst in der Schweiz, St. Gallen:
Historisches Museum/Kunstverein, 1976, p. 4, 20–23.
Môtiers 1989. Exposition suisse de sculpture,
La Chaux-de-Fonds: Edition d’En Haut, p. 115.
Victor Durschei: “Roman Signer. Da un’intervista con
Victor Durschei”, in: Frammenti, Interfacce, Intervalli.
Paradigmi della frammentazione nell’arte svizzera,
Genua: Museo d’arte contemporanea di Villa Croce,
1992, p. 184–186.
Michel Ritter: “Roman Signer”, in: Centre d’art
contemporain. Kunsthalle 1992 (Jahresheft), Fribourg:
FRI-ART, 1992, p. 14–19.
Kataloge, Bücher (Auswahl) / Selected Catalogues, Books
1982
1989
1992
1993
1973
Grandes Lignes. Quand l’art entre en gare, Paris: Gare
de Paris-Est, 1991, p. 48–49.
Kaspar König, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Ed.: “Der öffentliche
Blick”, in: Jahresring 38, München: Verlag Silke
Schreiber, 1991, p. 338–345.
Gerhard Mack: Roman Signer, in: Kritisches Lexikon der
Gegenwartskunst, München, No. 30/1995.
1976
Roman Signer. Filminstallation – 30 filmische Protokolle
von Experimenten und Naturprozessen, Kunsthaus
Zürich, St. Gallen: Eigenverlag des Künstlers, 1981.
1991
Heiderose Langer: Das Schiff in der zeitgenössischen
Kunst: eine ikonografische Analyse, Essen: Verlag Die
blaue Eule, 1993, p. 220, 437.
1994
Please, don’t hurt me!, Rotterdam: Edition Galerie Snoei,
1994, s.p.
Paolo Bianchi, Ed.: 100 Umkleidekabinen. Ein
ambulantes Kunstprojekt, Graz: steirischer herbst, 1994,
s.p.
“Roman Signer. Films 1975–1989”, in: Marianne
Brouwer, Ed.: Heart of Darkness, Otterloo: Kröller-Müller
Museum, 1994, p. 144–147.
1995
Marietta Johanna Schürholz: “Allgemeine Bemerkungen
zum Werk von Roman Signer”, in: ead.: Wasser. Roman
Signer – Michael LeJen, Dachau: Neue Galerie, 1995, s.p.
Saskia Bos, Ed.: Shift, Amsterdam: De Appel, 1995, s.p.
Eva Schmidt: “Roman Signer. Installation”, in: Horst
Griese, Ed.: Sammelkatalog der Galerie im KünstlerHaus,
Bremen: Galerie im KünstlerHaus, 1995, p. 44–46.
Bice Curiger, Ed.: Zeichen und Wunder. Niko Pirosmani
(1862–1918) und die Kunst der Gegenwart, Zürich:
Kunsthaus, 1995, p. 146–147.
Jean-Yves Jouannais: Histoire de l’infamie, Biennale de
Venise, Paris: Editions Hazan, 1995, p. 104–105.
Susanne Jakob: “Roman Signer”, in: vor ort. Kunst in
städtischen Situationen, Langenhagen: Kulturamt der
Stadt Langenhagen, 1995, p. 19–29.
1996
zur Ausstellung im Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen,
1988, s.p.
1990
Hans-Ulrich Obrist: “Roman Signers Skulpturbegriff”, in:
Parkett, Zürich, No. 26/1990, p. 116–123.
Jan Winkelmann: “Von Kisten, Explosionen und Wollmützen. Zu den Arbeiten von Roman Signer”, in: Heinrich
Lüber, Ed.: Performance Index, Basel: Performance Index,
1995, s.p.
1991
Hans-Ulrich Obrist: “Entretien avec Roman Signer”, in:
Interlope la Curieuse, Revue de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts
de Nantes, No. 3/1991, p. 29–37.
Rainer Fuchs, Ed.: Self-Construction, Wien: Museum
moderner Kunst – Stiftung Ludwig, 1996, p. 140–141.
1992
Claudia Jolles: “Roman Signer. Galerie Francesca Pia”,
in: Artforum, New York, Mai 1992, p. 129.
Miriam Bers: “Roman Signer – Über Faszination und
Angst oder Empfindsamkeit am Ende des Jahrhunderts”,
in: David Maas, Ed.: Station Deutschland, Berlin:
Künstlerhaus Bethanien, 1996, p. 14–15.
Renate Damsch-Wiehager: ”Roman Signer in der Villa
Merkel”, in: ead.: Helvetia Sounds. Christian Marclay,
Roman Signer, Jean Tinguely, Esslingen: Galerie der
Stadt Esslingen, Villa Merkel, 1996, p. 14–31.
1997
Marie-Theres Suermann: “Roman Signer”, in: Nike,
München, No. 34/1990, p. 41–42.
Hannelore Paflik-Huber: Kunst und Zeit. Zeitmodelle in
der Gegenwartskunst, München: Scaneg, 1997,
p. 52–56.
Max Wechsler: “Roman Signer. Der Sprengmeister als
Konstrukteur”, in: Das Kunst-Bulletin, Bern, No. 6/1992,
p. 41–45.
1993
Pascal Pique: “Roman Signer. Expérimentation”, in:
Blocnotes, Paris, No. 3/1993, p. 29.
Konrad Bitterli: “Roman Signer. An explosive self-portrait”,
in: Flash-Art, Mailand, Vol. XXVI, No. 170/1993, p.
76–77.
1995
Konrad Bitterli: “Roman Signers skulpturale Ereignisse”,
in: Parkett, Zürich, No. 45/1995, p. 122–126.
Susanne Jacob: “Roman Signer – Wasser. Zwischen
Versuchsanordnung und Ereignis-Skulptur”, in: Kaspar
König, Ed.: Skulptur.Projekte in Münster 1997, Münster:
Westfälisches Landesmuseum, 1997, p. 390–395.
Colin de Land: “In Sachen Roman Signer”, in: Parkett,
Zürich, No. 45/1995, p. 154–156.
1998
Francesco Bonami, Ed.: Unfinished History, Minneapolis:
Walker Art Center, 1998, p. 88.
1999
Gerhard Mack: “Die Linie und die Gewalt. Anmerkungen
zu einigen neuen Arbeiten von Roman Signer”, in: Angela
Thomas, Ed.: Christian Herdeg, Tumi Magnússon, Roman
Signer, Bernard Tagwerker, Zumikon: haus bill, 1999,
p. 54–65.
Jean-Yves Jouannais: “Roman Signer: Prometheus’
Rückstand”, in: Parkett, Zürich, No. 45/1995, p.
117–119.
Christoph Doswald: “Skulpturale Versuchsanordnungen”,
in: Parkett, Zürich, No. 45/1995, p. 129–131.
Pia Viewing: “Bruch oder Kontinuität”, in: Parkett, Zürich,
No. 45/1995, p. 142–143.
Max Wechsler: “Aktion mit einer Zündschnur: Exkursion
einer Explosion”, in: Parkett, Zürich, No. 45/1995,
p. 144–146.
1996
Konrad Bitterli: “Roman Signer. Lineare Strukturen in
Raum und Zeit”, in: Grenzgänge der Zeichnung.
Jahrbuch ’96, Nürnberg: Institut für moderne Kunst, 1996,
p. 78–84.
1997
Max Wechsler: “Roman Signer. Aktion mit einer Zündschnur”, in: Paolo Bianchi Ed.: Atlas der Künstlerreisen,
Kunstforum International, Ruppichteroth, Vol. 137/1997,
p. 256–259.
Zeitschriften (Auswahl) / Selected Periodicals
1977
Fritz Billeter: “Roman Signers Spiel mit Energie und dem
Elementaren”, in: Das Kunst-Bulletin, Bern, No. 10/1977,
p. 17–22.
1981
Rudolf Hanhart: “Roman Signer, Filminstallation”, in:
Mitteilungsblatt der Kunstgesellschaft Zürich, Zürich,
No. 3/1981, p. 17–19.
1983
Bernhard Bürgi: “Roman Signer”, in: Das Kunst-Bulletin,
Bern, No. 10/1983, p. 12–15.
1987
Armin Wildermuth: “Aktionskunst in Aktion. Ein Bericht
aus Kassel”, in: Bulletin der Kulturwissenschaftlichen
Abteilung der Hochschule St. Gallen, St. Gallen,
No. 17/1987, p. 5–6.
1988
Tina Grütter: “Roman Signer – Skulpturen”, Begleittext
95