Starting from the 6th of July 2019, the Château de Montsoreau-Musée d’art contemporain will give carte blanche to the Swiss artist Roman Signer, known throughout the world for his explosive performances and his risk-taking. The exhibition puts sculpture and photography in perspective and highlights the artist’s ability to rethink the very principles of contemporary sculpture.
An artist under tension
It is a commonplace to say that revolution is something stupid, risky and dangerous. The exhibition occupies four months on the second floor of the Château de Montsoreau-Museum of contemporary art and brings together Roman Signer’s flagship works such as a series of unpublished photographs taken between 1972 and 1986. Legendary for his interventions on objects that he transforms with explosives as a driving force, Roman Signer also uses the snapshot to freeze his concerns. In the course of the photographs on display, nature reveals itself as the artist’s studio or rather laboratory. The visitor is invited to enter and observe from a distance. He becomes a spectator of the happy or catastrophic « accidents » skilfully orchestrated by the artist (Ballon mit Spazierstock, 2016) at a time when reality is disrupted, modified by an unexpected event. The exhibition shows the work of this artist, often wrongly perceived as in search of spectacular and sensational. The works chosen show Signer as a precise and direct operator, refusing to stage himself and rejecting the concept of performance.
Time Sculptor
We find there the artist’s constant concern to question time. Long time, when a helicopter disrupts the improbable concert of a pianist on a lake pontoon (Vers la Flamme und Roman Signer, 2014), short time when a series of water-filled cans tumble at full speed from the roof of a house (Dachlawine, 2017). The scenographic journey thus underlines the crucial role of the four elements in the artist’s work, the starting and ending point of his works.
Roman Signer reserves surprising destinies for the most harmless objects such as a fan or a balloon, thus creating a poetry of destruction.
07/06/2019 – 11/06/2019
Every day from 10am to 7pm
Public opening on July 6 at 6pm