The Langhans Gallery Prague

Roman Signer (b. 1938) is one of the most respected contemporary Swiss artists. The style of his “action sculptures” and their documentation moves back and forth between provocative absurd play and th

The series of photographs of journeys through Europe, Japan, and the USA, an important part of the exhibition at Langhans Gallery Prague, has a similar effect.

The patron of the exhibition is His Excellency, Mr Jean-François Kammer, Swiss Ambassador to the Czech Republic. For their generous support we thank the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, Prague City Hall, and Pro Helvetia.
Media partners: Art & Antiques, FotoVideo, PragueOut, Rádio 1, Respekt

PRESS RELEASE
Till now the important Swiss artist Roman Signer (b. 1938) had never exhibited in the Czech Republic. Langhans Gallery, however, has just organized an exhibition that will finally present the public here with a cross-section of his oeuvre. Of his recent works, the exhibition includes a set of photographs called Reise Bilder, videos of his action art, and even installations, which Signer calls sculpture. (“Sometimes I say I’m a sculptor,” he has remarked. “Of course I don’t mean that practically, but you can see I tend to deal with three-dimensional problems.”)

Signer has been working on Reise Bilder (Travel Pictures), a set of photographs from Europe, Japan, and the USA, for the past 16 years. With a great sense of humour, he records absurd situations urban and rural. The aesthetic and topics of his photographs are similar to those in his action art: the movement of objects, in almost surrealist constellations, evokes a sense of defying the laws of nature. The milieu in which Signer makes his photographs is often like in a fairy tale – a magic landscape in Iceland, time that has partly stood still in the Polish countryside, the calm and majesty of the Swiss Alps.

With aspects of spontaneous playfulness, his works are rooted in childhood. He grew up on the banks of the River Sitter in Appenzell, intrigued by the interaction of the elements and simple objects of everyday use. (He was fascinated, for instance, by boots that kept him dry when standing in water, while still letting him feel the cold.) In his later action art Signer has continued to experiment, developing these relationships and possibilities. With or without an audience, the result is always recorded on film. Signer was greatly influenced by the late Harald Szeemann’s exhibition When Attitudes Become Form (Berne, 1969), which made him understand his own place in contemporary sculpture.

Among his action art is Explosion (1982), which created artificial lightning: a fuse ran from the ground 100 metres straight up, where it was held by a balloon; after the fuse was lit, one saw a long vertical flash that would have never occurred naturally. Signer is often a direct participant in his own experiments: in the work Cap with Rocket (1983), for example, he had his cap shot off his head. In 1991 a bicycle hung on a pulley and, propelled by jet engines, went whizzing through the exhibition hall.

A three-volume publication providing an overview of Signer’s work is available at Langhans Gallery.

We thank the Ministry of Culture, Prague City Hall, Pro Helvetia and Prague 1 Borough for their generous support.
Media partners: Art & Antiques, Respekt, Rádio 1, PragueOut, Foto Video.

Accompanying events:
The documentary film Signers Koffer will be shown, as part of the Audiovisual series at the Světozor cinema, Prague, Thursday, 20 September, 8:30 pm.
Two talks will be given by Pavlína Morganová, one on action art around the world, Thursday, 4 October, 6 pm, the other on Czech action art, Thursday, 18 October, 6 pm.

From 30.9. 2007 to 27.1. 2008 a large exhibition of Signer’s works was held at the Museum für Gegenwart in the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin.