Roman Signer
Galerie Martin Janda, Vienna, Austria
Roman Signer, Kanone (2005)
Entering Roman Signer’s fourth solo show at Martin Janda, one walks straight into the line of fire; a cannon loaded with a rather over-familiar projectile is aimed directly at the viewer (Kanone, 2005). At the sight of the red Euro 2008 ball in the barrel, the football championship’s slogan springs to mind: ‘Expect Emotions’. But there was no need to worry: since Signer used it in an action last year to blast a stack of blue barrels, this particular cannon seems to have fallen silent. Apart from a strangely natural-sounding hum, the rest of the gallery, too, is suspiciously quiet. The other objects in the space also bear tell-tale marks of past explosions. Signer is showing 3 blaue Kisten (3 Blue Wooden Crates, 2008) in which he blew up paint – where the lid may lift to reveal a glimpse of a wonderful blue testimony to the completed process.
On the upper floor, elements of the artist’s typical deformed vocabulary form a beautiful whole, where the surviving fragments of an exploded briefcase (Aktenkoffer, 2001) meet a table with a hole in it (Tisch, 2008). Roman Signer advocates ‘controlled destruction, not destruction for its own sake’, and in a series of five photographs he documents cause and effect in an accident with a Piaggio laden with water barrels that overturns on a ramp (Rampe, 2008).
Rampe (2008)
A climax of this kind must also have taken place in the gallery’s basement in the form of three explosions in blue paint pots (3 blauen Farbtöpfen, 2008). In this work, Signer has extended his sphere of activity to the walls, floor and ceiling of the room. And here in the white cube, these ‘temporary sculptures’ appear almost as transient and wonderful as if they were outside in the open countryside.
In Kleine Helikopter (Little Helicopters, 2008), Signer uses three objects and a video to shows the prototypical rise and fall of an insect-like species. Its breeding ground appears to be located on the ceiling in the form of distinctively packaged ‘larvae’. Several ‘drones’ appear caught in a transparent tube on the wall (Rohr mit Helicoptern, 2007). Outside a wooden box that recalls a polling-booth structure, underneath a Perspex tube protruding diagonally from its front, a pile of these objects lies motionless on the floor (Kabine, booth, 2008). Inside the box, suspicions are confirmed that certain helicopters have been selected to be inserted into the tube, for a controlled act of destruction.
56 Kleine Helicopter (2008)
The kinetic quality of these works would be merely inferred were it not for the whirring sound in the video 56 Kleine Helicopter (2008). We see this group of creatures flying rapidly around a room that is far too small for them. Lined up in neat rows, they wait for a remote command, upon which they take off and circle. Only a few prove effective in this swarm mode, and one after another they fail or collide in the crowd and then fall to the floor. With many of Signer’s previous works, one instinctively closed one’s eyes in anticipation of the blast, a brief moment of oblivion before returning to delight in the aftermath. This time, the bang is missing and the viewer’s powers of imagination are seriously but not unpleasantly put to the test.
Translated by Nicholas Grindell
Jakob Neulinger
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