Roman Signer's Paris Retrospective Highlights Silence

The Centre culturel suisse in Paris hosted Roman Signer's first Parisian retrospective from September 10 to November 12, 2006. The exhibition featured installations combining video and sculpture, notably a work with two sets of five stacked pairs of screens—ten sculptures using twenty televisions. On the upper screens, a woman communicates in sign language, translating the silent color films on the lower screens, which depict mini-narratives of explosions and danger. Signer has used everyday objects like balloons, buckets, vacuum cleaners, motors, cans, and fans since 1975, reacting to natural forces such as wind, gravity, and fire. He describes his practice as a language with a vocabulary of simple elements and forms, emphasizing the importance of temporal stages before, during, and after actions. The artist states that the moment an object is in the air and falls is crucial, but he is more interested in the preparatory phase and the aftermath, which he considers anonymous sculptures. The review by Dorothée Tramoni argues that the exhibition's significance lies in silence—the quiet before and after explosions—contrasting with the noise often highlighted by critics. The monograph published by Phaidon in 2006 is cited as correcting past misunderstandings. Signer rejects labels such as object artist, filmmaker, draftsman, action artist, explosion artist, or sculptor, instead defining himself as an artist working with different things.