Collection: Roman Signer

Roman Signer (born 1938, Appenzell, Switzerland) is a Swiss artist whose practice centres on actions, experiments and events involving physical forces — water, wind, fire, gravity, explosion — documented through film, photography and the objects and traces they leave behind. Working since the early 1970s, Signer has developed a body of work that occupies a space between sculpture, performance and scientific experiment, treating energy and duration as primary materials.

His actions are typically modest in scale and precisely observed: a kayak propelled by a rocket, a table lifted by a water jet, boots filled with gunpowder and detonated. The results are recorded rather than staged for the camera, and the documentation — film loops, photographs, annotated drawings — functions as both evidence and artwork. Objects used in or produced by the actions are retained as sculptural residue.

Signer has exhibited internationally at major institutions including the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and Documenta. He represented Switzerland at the Venice Biennale in 1999. His participation in Under Spaghetti Junction (Fine Rats International, Birmingham, 1993) — an exhibition held beneath the M6 motorway interchange — placed his practice within a network of artist-led and unconventional exhibition contexts operating outside institutional structures in the early 1990s.