Flying and Painting by Roman Signer

Ebeltoft, 2016

Signer’s performative actions and arrangements repurpose everyday objects in unexpected ways, often as a humourous, quasi-scientific experiments. For this work, Signer modified a number of four-propeller drones attaching a barber brush on their top. From the inside of a cargo container, the artist carried out a ‘painting action’: the ceiling of the container, which had been specially adapted, has been painted with blue paint by the brush attached to the flying drone, remotely controlled by the artist.

Once the action was completed, Signer winged the one of the drones away to be lost in the open sky. Another drone remains inside the container as a testimony of the action and to expose to the public the tool used to carry it out.

Flying and Painting was realised in the summer of 2016 at Kvadrat’s HQ in Ebeltoft

Roman Signer (Appenzell, 1938, lives and works in St. Gallen) has participated in prestigious international art exhibitions such as Documenta in Kassel (1987), Skulptur Projekte Münster (1997) and the Shanghai Biennale (2012). In 1999, he represented Switzerland at the 48th International Art Exhibition - la Biennale di Venezia. He has widely shown internationally in prominent institutions including: the Camden Arts Centre and the Barbican Arts Centre in London (2001 and 2015); Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin (2007) and the Swiss Institute in New York (2010). In recent years, a travelling exhibition showing Roman Signer’s Super8 films was presented at different locations in China including the CAFA Art Museum in Beijing (2014) and the GAFA Art Museum in Guangzhou. The same exhibition was also displayed in Italy at MAN in Nuoro (2016).

Throughout his career, Signer has made more than fifty permanent sculptures, mostly in Switzerland but also in other locations including: Trivero (IT), Bochum (DE), Klein Göpfritz (AT), Hallstatt (AT), Nantes (FR), Lismore Castle (IR). A new commission in Cleveland (US) is also currently being realized.