The MAN Museum is pleased to announce the imminent opening of the exhibition Roman Signer. Films and Installations, edited by Lorenzo Giusti and Li Zhenhua.
Rich in over two hundred films and a series of new installations created for this occasion, the one at the MAN in Nuoro will be Roman Signer’s first solo exhibition in an Italian museum.
Signer began his career as an artist in the second half of the 1960s, after having worked as a draftsman for an architect, as an apprentice radio engineer, and, for a short time, as a technician in a pressure cooker factory. Known for having defined a new concept of sculpture linked to process, transformation and movement, Signer creates installations as actions, experiments, almost always solitary, for which he uses everyday objects (umbrellas, tables, boots, containers, hats , bicycles) activated by gunpowder or natural forces, such as wind or water. Processes of explosion or collision that transform into visually and emotionally engaging aesthetic experiences and that interpret the empirical approach as an artistic question.
The project at MAN in Nuoro is divided into two segments. The first, born from the collaboration with the Chronos Art Center in Shanghai, presents the entire production of Super 8 films made by the artist during his career. A nucleus of 205 works ranging from 1975 to 1989 – the year in which Signer abandoned film to move on to other media – presented within a fascinating 100-channel video installation created in China and proposed here in a new, enriched and developed version . Videos shot in their own “laboratory” in St. Gallen or in natural spaces, especially in Weissbad, in the canton of Appenzell.
The second segment of the project presents three new sculptural works created for the exhibition at MAN, characterized as always by subtle irony. Among the new productions, Umbrellas (2016) is an opera site specific for the museum staircase, a bizarre system of rain covers held together by an unstable balance. Installation (2016) is a walkable sculpture that will occupy an entire room of the museum, a surreal journey that reflects on the perception of oneself and one’s body, in which the observer becomes an observed object. Closes the route Eyeglasses (2016), an unusual object, composed of a Super 8 projector and a pair of glasses to alter the light projection, which seems to cast an irreverent gaze on the artist’s production, always on the border between sculpture and video, between stillness and movement , between action and vision.
The exhibition will be completed by a catalog with texts by Lorenzo Giusti, Li Zhenhua, Barbara Casavecchia and Rachel Withers. In addition to the documentation of the new works, the publication will also contain a DVD with a collection of the actions carried out by Signer in Italy, starting from the beginning of the nineties, in places such as Civitella d’Agliano, Stromboli, the Maremma, but also Venice, on the occasion of the 1999 Biennial.
Roman Signer (Appenzell, 1938) has participated in the most important international art exhibitions, such as “documenta” in Kassel (1987), the Skulptur Projekte in Münster (1997), the Shanghai Biennial (2012). In 1999 he represented Switzerland at the Venice Biennale. Among his latest solo exhibitions are: Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht (2000), Camden Arts Center in London (2001); OK Centrum für Gegenwartskunst in Linz (2005); Aargauer Kunsthaus in Aarau (2006); Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin (2007); Sala de Arte Publico Siqueiros in Mexico City (2011); Hangar à Bananes in Nantes, Kunsthalle in Mainz (2012), Kunstmuseum in St. Gallen (2014), Barbican Center in London, Kunsthus in Zug and Center Culturel Suisse in Paris (2015). In China his work has recently been presented at the Hangzhou Academy of Art, the CAFA Art Museum in Beijing (2014), the GAFA Art Museum in Guangzhou and the OCT in Shenzhen (2015).
Roman Signer. Films and Installations is a project of the MAN museum, curated by Lorenzo Giusti and Li Zhenhua, created in collaboration with CAC – Chronos Art Center in Shanghai, with the technical partnership of WTI International Co. Limited, the support of Pro Helvetia and the contribution of Regione Sardegna , Province of Nuoro and Foundation of Sardinia.