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ROMAN SIGNERXLVIII. Biennale di Venezia 1999. Svizzera

Text des Signer-Katalogs - document.doc - 13. Mai 2023 / Vo - Seite 1

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

Ausstellung / Exhibition

Kommissär / Commissioner: Urs StaubVizekommissär / Vice Commissioner: Konrad BitterliPressebetreuung / Press support: Oliver WickPhotographie / Photography: Stefan RohnerSprengtechnik / Explosive support: Günther Schwarz, Roman SignerTechnische Betreuung / Technical support: Urs Burger, Arthur Clerici, Stan. Rogowiec, Tiberio Scalbi, Roland SutterVideotechnik / Video support: Aleksandra Signer, Videicompany, Aufdi Aufdermauer, Karin Wegmüller

Katalog / Catalogue

Konzeption / Conception: Roman Signer, Peter ZimmermannRedaktion / Edited by: Konrad Bitterli, Matthias WohlgemuthÜbersetzungen / Translations: Jeanne Haunschild (e), Diane de Rahm (f), Monica Nolli-Meyer (i)Gestaltung / Design: Peter ZimmermannVideobilder / Videostills: Aufdi Aufdermauer, Aleksandra SignerSatz, Lithographie / Typesetting, Lithography: Nievergelt Policom AG, Zürich, Peter Zimmermann Graphic Design, ZürichDruck / Printed by: Lichtdruck AG, DielsdorfEinband / Bound by: Buchbinderei Burkhardt AG, Mönchaltorf

Herausgegeben vom Bundesamt für Kultur, Bern, im Verlag Edition Unikate, CH-8027 ZürichPublished 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 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 VeniseSCULTURA EVENTO – Roman Signer alla XLVIII Biennale di VeneziaEVENT-SCULPTURE – Roman Signer at the 48th Biennale in Venice

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

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

BIOGRAPHIE / BIOGRAPHIE / BIOGRAFIA / BIOGRAPHY

AUSSTELLUNGEN / EXPOSITIONS / MOSTRE / EXHIBITIONS

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


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 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 determines 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 introducing 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: “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 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 self-portrait 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 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 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 contem-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 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


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 153.13 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.


Biographie / Biographie / Biografia / Biography

1938 geboren in Appenzelllebt und arbeitet in St. GallenBorn in AppenzellLives and works in St. Gallen

Ausstellungen / Expositions / Mostre / Exhibitions

Einzelausstellungen (Auswahl) / Selected Solo Exhibitions

1973 "Objekte, Konstruktionen", Galerie Lock, St. Gallen1980 Kleiner Ausstellungsraum, Künstlerhaus Hamburg, 1981 "Filminstallation", Kunsthaus Zürich1982 Museum Hedendaagse Kunst, Utrecht1983 "Zeichnungen", Kunstmuseum Winterthur1985 "Schnelle Veränderungen", Künstlerhaus Stuttgart

Kunstmuseum des Kantons Thurgau, Kartause IttingenGalerie Bog Gysin, DübendorfGalerie Stampa, Basel

1988 "Neue Arbeiten", Kunsthalle St. Gallen1989 "Skulpturen", Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen1990 American Fine Arts, Galerie Colin de Land, New York1992 "Vitesse: 2’000 Mètres/Seconde", FRI-ART, Centre d'art contemporain, Fribourg

"Installationen", Helmhaus ZürichLe Creux de l'Enfer, Centre d'art contemporain, Thiers

1993 Raum aktueller Kunst, WienHôtel Saint-Simon, Fonds régional d'art contemporain Poitou-Charentes, Angoulème"Skulptur", Kunstmuseum St. Gallen

1994 Europäisches Kulturzentrum, Erfurt1995 "Werken", Het Apollohuis, Eindhoven

"Sculptures", Galerie Art:Concept, Nizza1996 Slunkaríki, Isafjördur1997 "Works", Goldie Paley Gallery, Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia

The Photographer's Gallery, London"Neue Arbeiten", Galerie Hauser & Wirth, Zürich"Works", Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills"Ich war hier – I was here", The Swiss Institute, New York

1998 "Skulptur, Fotografie, Video", Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin1999 Galerie Hauser & Wirth, Zürich

"Wasserinstallation" Bonnefanten Museum, MaastrichtWiener Secession, Wien

Gruppenausstellungen (Auswahl) / Selected Group Exhibitions

1973 "Kunstmacher 73. 60 unter 35", Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen1975 6. Schweizerische Plastikausstellung, Biel1978 "Aktualität Vergangenheit", 3. Biennale der Schweizer Kunst, Kunstmuseum Winterthur1980 7. Schweizerische Plastikausstellung, Biel1981 "1. Bildhauersymposium Bochum 1979/80 – Stadt und Bildhauerei", Kunstmuseum Bochum1984 "Treffpunkt Bodensee: Drei Länder – drei Künstler", Städtisches Bodensee-Museum, Friedrichshafen1986 8. Schweizerische Plastikausstellung, Biel1987 documenta 8, Kassel1988 "Das gläserne U-Boot", Donaufestival, Krems/Stein1989 "Ressource Kunst. Die Elemente neu gesehen", Berlin, Saarbrücken, München, Budapest

Môtiers 1989. Exposition suisse de sculpture, Môtiers


1990 "Transformations", Fondation Gulbenkian, Lissabon; Association pour un musée d'art moderne, Genf1991 "A Swiss Dialectic", The Renaissance Society, The University of Chicago, Chicago

"Grandes Lignes", Rencontres Art – Public, Gare de Paris-Est, Paris1992 "Frammenti, Interfacce, Intervalli. Paradigmi della frammentazione nell'arte svizzera", Museo d'arte

contemporanea di Villa Croce, Genua1993 "Différentes natures – visions de l'art contemporain", EPAD, Galerie Art 4 und Galerie de l'Esplanade,

La Défense/ParisFurkart 1993, Hotel Furkapass, Furkapasshöhe"Energy & Elements", Borealis 6, National Gallery, ReykjavíkSteirischer Herbst, Graz"Equilibre – Gleichgewicht, ƒÄquivalenz und Harmonie in der Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts", Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau

1994 "Heart of Darkness", Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterloo1995 "Zeichen und Wunder. Niko Pirosmani (1862–1918) und die Kunst der Gegenwart", Kunsthaus

Zürich; Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de CompostelaMôtiers 95. art en plein air, Môtiers"Shift", De Appel, Amsterdam"Self-Construction", Museum moderner Kunst und Stiftung Ludwig, 20-er Haus, Wien

1996 "Helvetia Sounds", Galerie der Stadt Esslingen, Villa Merkel, Esslingen"Im Kunstlicht. Photographie im 20. Jahrhundert aus den Sammlungen im Kunsthaus Zürich", Kunsthaus Zürich

1997 "Zeitskulptur. Volumen als Ereignis", Oberösterreichisches Landesmuseum, Linz"het drinkglas", Stichting Leerdam Glasmanifestie, Fort Asperen, Leerdam"Voglio vedere le mie montagne. Die Schwerkaft der Berge", Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau; Kunsthalle Krems"Alpenblick. Die zeitgenössische Kunst und das Alpine", Kunsthalle Wien"Skulptur.Projekte in Münster 1997", Westfälisches Landesmuseum, Münster7e semaine internationale de vidéo, Saint-Gervais, Genf

1998 "Grandeur Nature", Parc départemental de la Courneuve, Forum culturel de Blanc-Mesnil, Seine-Saint-DenisThe Living Museum, Reykjavík"Poseidons Auge", Handelshafen der Stadt Linz"Current Research. Charts, Evidence and Other Documentation", The Millais Gallery, Southampton Institute, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland"Unfinished History", Walker Art Center, Minneapolis"Europa Afrika", 7. Triennale der Kleinplastik, Forum Südwest LB, Stuttgart

1999 "Provisorium I", Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht"Panorama 2000", Central Museum, Utrecht"Roman Signer, Tumi Magnusson, Bernard Tagwerker, Christian Herdeg", haus bill, Zumikon"The Sultans Pool", Art Focus, Jerusalem

Bibliographie (Auswahl) / Bibliographie (Selection) BibliograFia (Selezione) / Selected Bibliography

Monographien / Monographs

1973 Alois Hengartner: Roman Signer, St. Gallen: Edition Galerie Lock, 1973.1975 Peter Faessler: Roman Signer, Bernhard Tagwerker. Gemeinschaftsarbeiten, St. Gallen: Edition

Galerie E. + F. Buchmann, 1975.1976 Roman Signer. Zeichnungen 1974–1976, Frauenfeld: Edition Stäheli und Thoma, 1976.1978 Roman Signer. Objekte – Zeichnungen, 1971–1978, St. Gallen: Eigenverlag des Künstlers, 1978.1980 Peter Faessler: Museumsbrief Nr. 40, St. Gallen: Kunstmuseum, Februar 1980.1981 Roman Signer. Zeichnungen, St. Gallen: Eigenverlag des Künstlers, 1981.

Roman Signer. Filminstallation – 30 filmische Protokolle von Experimenten und Naturprozessen, Kunsthaus Zürich, St. Gallen: Eigenverlag des Künstlers, 1981.

1982 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, 1987.1988 Corinne Schatz: Roman Signer. Skulptur, St. Gallen: Verlag Vexer, 1988.1989 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 Super-8-Filmen 1975–1989, Zürich: Verlag

Helmhaus/Offizin, 1992.Ute Dreckmann: Roman Signer. Aktion mit 14 Fässern, Castrop-Rauxel: Forum Castrop-Rauxel, 1992.

1993 Laurence Gateau, Ed.: Roman Signer. Mon voyage au Creux de l’Enfer, Thiers: Creux de l’Enfer, Centre d’art contemporain, 1993.Konrad Bitterli, Lutz Tittel, Roland Wäspe: Roman Signer. Skulptur, St. Gallen: Kunstmuseum, 1993 (mit Werkverzeichnis von 1971 bis 1993).

1994 Elisabeth Keller-Schweizer: Roman Signer. NICHT ausgeführte Projekte für den öffentlichen Raum, St. Gallen: Typotron, 1994.Jörk Rothamel: Roman Signer. Installationen, Erfurt: Europäisches Kulturzentrum in Thüringen, 1994.

1995 Max Wechsler: Roman Signer. Explosion, Poschiavo/Luzern: Edition Periferia, 1995.Marie-Louise Lienhard: Roman Signer. Skizzen, Aarau: Forum Schlossplatz, 1995.Gerhard Mack: Roman Signer, in: Kritisches Lexikon der Gegenwartskunst, München, No. 30/1995.

1997 Elsa Longhauser, Ed.: Roman Signer. Works, Philadelphia: The Galleries at Moore, Moore College of Art and Design, 1997.

1998 Roman Signer, Brétigny-sur-Orge: Espace Jules Verne, Centre d’art contemporain, 1998.1999 Eva Sjuve: Roman Signer. Zeit und Raum in Signers Skulptur, Lund: Lund University, 1999.

Kataloge, Bücher (Auswahl) / Selected Catalogues, Books

1973 Max Freivogel: Kunstmacher 73. 60 unter 35, Schaffhausen: Museum zu Allerheiligen, 1973, p. 96–97.

1975 6. Schweizerische Plastikausstellung, Biel, 1975, p. 81, 114.1976 Rudolf Hanhart: Objekte und Zeichnungen. Aspekte zeitgenössischer Kunst in der Schweiz, St.

Gallen: Historisches Museum/Kunstverein, 1976, p. 4, 20–23.1978 Peter Killer: Aktualität Vergangenheit. 3. Biennale der Schweizer Kunst, Winterthur: Kunstmuseum,

1978, s.p. 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. 18.1987 Elisabeth Jappe: "Roman Signer", in: documenta 8, Kassel, 1987, vol. 2, p. 308.1988 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.Môtiers 1989. Exposition suisse de sculpture, La Chaux-de-Fonds: Edition d’En Haut, p. 115.

1990 Hans-Ulrich Obrist: "Roman Signer", in: Transformations, Lissabon: Fondation Gulbenkian; Genf: Association pour un musée d'art moderne, p. 19–33.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.

1991 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.

1992 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.

1993 "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 – Gleichgewicht, ƒÄquivalenz 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.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.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.

1996 Rainer Fuchs, Ed.: Self-Construction, Wien: Museum moderner Kunst – Stiftung Ludwig, 1996, p. 140–141.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 Hannelore Paflik-Huber: Kunst und Zeit. Zeitmodelle in der Gegenwartskunst, München: Scaneg, 1997, p. 52–56.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.

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.

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 zur Ausstellung im Museum zu Allerheiligen,

Schaffhausen, 1988, s.p.1990 Marie-Theres Suermann: "Roman Signer", in: Nike, München, No. 34/1990, p. 41–42.

Hans-Ulrich Obrist: "Roman Signers Skulpturbegriff", in: Parkett, Zürich, No. 26/1990, p. 116–123.1991 Hans-Ulrich Obrist: "Entretien avec Roman Signer", in: Interlope la Curieuse, Revue de l'Ecole des

Beaux-Arts de Nantes, No. 3/1991, p. 29–37.1992 Claudia Jolles: "Roman Signer. Galerie Francesca Pia", in: Artforum, New York, Mai 1992, p. 129.

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.Colin de Land: "In Sachen Roman Signer", in: Parkett, Zürich, No. 45/1995, p. 154–156.Christoph Doswald: "Skulpturale Versuchsanordnungen", in: Parkett, Zürich, No. 45/1995, p. 129–131.Jean-Yves Jouannais: "Roman Signer: Prometheus’ Rückstand", in: Parkett, Zürich, No. 45/1995, p. 117–119.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.


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