A video shared on social media https://twitter.com/Culture_Crit/status/1671281599437062146 has drawn the taunts of Internet users, denouncing the absurdity of the contemporary Art world. In these images, an elderly man is seen stacking red plastic buckets filled with sand, then making a hole in the bottom one, which spills onto the ground. After a long silence, the structure collapses. The audience hesitates to applaud and waits for the man to hold out his arms, presenting the fait accompli, to cheer him on.
“I dream of having this at home but it must be worth millions”, mocks a surfer in front of the simplicity of the performance. “When spectators don’t know when to clap, you know it’s bullshit. Well, it’s even simpler…” notes another. “The real artist is the one who will clean it all up” abounds a third.
The man seen setting up the red plastic buckets before they fall is Swiss sculptor Roman Signer. The video was originally posted on June 18 by Swiss gallery Haus & Wirth, which represents him. “Roman Signer Activates His Sand Bucket Sculpture at Malmö Art Gallery” soberly indicates the gallery, which invites the public to discover “Signer’s first major solo exhibition in Sweden, featuring works and films from throughout his career, from the 1970s to the present day.” The work presented is called Sandsäule, which can be translated as “column of sand” in French. It had already been installed in 2008 at the Martin Janda Gallery, in Vienna, Austria.
“Irresistible humor”
Born in 1938, Roman Signer is a visual artist recognized in the art world for his Zeitskulpturenin French, “sculptures of time”. According to art critic Rachel Withers, these temporal sculptures, which add the component of time to the other three dimensions, “explore the transformation of materials through time, drawing the viewer’s attention to the experience of the event, the changes it creates and the forces involved in it. With their varied combination of three-dimensional objects, live action, still photographs and filmed documentation, Signer’s time sculptures frame episodes that deal with the containment and release of energy, always with refinement, often with captivating epigrammatic brilliance and irresistible humour.
He was exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 2009, at documenta 8 in Kassel in 1987 and at the Venice Biennale, where he represented Switzerland in 1999. Release covered his exhibition at the Frac Franche-Comté in 2022 and even met him in 2016 during an exhibition at the Center de la photographie in Geneva.
In this interview, Roman Signer returned to his conception of his work, explaining that he “Always worked with things that already exist: buckets, umbrellas. […] My work is not surreal. Me, it’s absurd, not surreal. What I do is not calculated, I follow my desires. If there is humor in my work, it is neither forced nor sought. It comes. It’s natural. People always compare me to Buster Keaton. He’s a great artist but he wanted to make people laugh and I don’t want to make them laugh. I don’t expect that from them. I try to keep their eyes open. It’s another approach. We can of course laugh, but that is not the goal.
