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Issue 106 Winter 2009
Roman Signer, Kayak, 2000. Video still: Tomasz Rogowiec. All images courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth, Zürich. Special thanks to Barbara Signer and Gregory Volk.
Roman Signer has always lived and worked in St. Gallen, in eastern Switzerland. I visited him at his studio recently, where he showed me how sand trickles down from the ceiling onto a violin suspended below and makes music in the process. One could say that while sand is the performer of the piece, Signer is the producer of the musical performance. Signer is known as an explosion artist and a maker of ephemeral sculptures. He is neither an intellectual, nor a craftsman nor a blaster. He is not an action artist, a clown, or a shaman either. Signer has no use for theory: his art is not conceptual, and nor is it minimalist or a land art. To put it simply, Signer just thinks a lot. He thinks for himself and for those beyond; so that the world may lose its ordinariness and reveal itself to us in its splendor.
Signer makes objects very close to our lives, like tables or chairs, relate to earth, wind, fire, and water in unexpected ways. What is true for chemistry—from the combination of basic elements something completely new emerges—is also true for Signer’s artworks. Having turned 70 last May, Signer is thought by many to be Switzerland’s most important artist. In his Swiss-German accent, his answer to that would be a laconic yes, a brief monosyllabic answer that consecrates the transient as the most fertile ground for art.
(Interview)