Yesterday I laughed out loud, several times, in a gallery … I can’t remember the last time that I did that. The show, a retrospective: Roman Signer at Malmö konsthall.
I ’kind of knew’ his work … from some group/thematic shows … maybe something at the Haywood (London) in the 90s but I could be very wrong about that. I was excited to learn that he had a solo, his first in Sweden, that coincided with my being here in the south. I didn’t just laugh … I smiled, wondered, and even felt an odd little nervous excitement. It was the video/film pieces that made me laugh … and that made me nervous – there is something cartoon-like about several of them: they put me in mind of Tom and Jerry, and Roadrunner or more accurately Wile E Coyote. The static camera records the scene, there is stillness, you know that something is about to happen – that the stillness is about to be shattered … literally exploded … I feel an excited tension build in my body … anticipation … and then in perfect synch with the explosion comes the release – it lasts perhaps a fraction of a second. And that is when I laugh.
To me … for me … the work is elegant, absurd, playful, ingenious, confident, hilarious, intelligent, simple, refined, mature and childish all at the same time. I find myself drawn into a world of curiosity … of asking ’what if …?’ of experiment for experiment’s sake. He is constantly testing things … testing materials … testing energy. When I was at Dartington I was in the 3-4D … 3/4D… department – the fourth dimension being time, which enabled performance, live, and durational practices, having seen … experienced … Roman Signer’s show I wonder if that fourth dimension was misnamed … misunderstood … misattributed … is the fourth dimension energy? Is energy a dimension?
I am inspired by his curiosity, his consistency, his commitment, his craziness. I love it when I leave an exhibition enthused and desperate to get to the studio and to get on!
