Anna Zhao

    anna.whizh@yahoo.com

    MORE than 200 videos of action art by Swiss artist Roman Signer are on exhibition at OCT Art and Design Gallery until Oct. 11.

    The videos, mostly created from 1975 to 1989, recorded Signer’s fantasy-like experiments using everyday objects. Unlike other artists who rely on media techniques, Signer created his works without sound recording equipment, thus making his works with plain aesthetic beauty generated by carefully planned images.

    One eye-catching piece is a video in the gallery’s first-floor screening room that features a huge ball dropping from high up in the air. Blue fluid inside the ball splashes around when the ball crashes to the ground. The piece is one of the various experiments Signer has performed related to the lapse of time and transition of physical energy.

    Tables, buckets, hats, umbrellas, ropes, balloons and fireworks are all common objects used in his experiments, but they are used with ingenuity. For example, chairs are catapulted out of a hotel’s windows to show destruction; a table attached to four buckets are cast into the sea; an umbrella is blown away after a bomb goes off from under a leaf.

    Some of the actions are quite similar to what physicists do in their experiments, but Signer’s experiments are playful and humorous in tone.

    Explosions, collisions and projections of objects through space are often demonstrated in Signer’s experiments.

    Many of his works captured transient moments that change in time.

    In an experiment in 1968, “Rain Boots,” he photographed water splashing from a pair of boots. In another, the flow of time seems to be preserved through his camera as it recorded traces of smoke from the end of a burning rope.

    His other experiments explored material transformation under pressure, the release of pressure and personal expressions of memories and pain.

    In the video “Sand Stairs,” Signer demonstrated what happened to sand when it is no longer confined in a solid container. He loaded sand into several bottomless buckets that were stacked up, and then he swiftly removed the buckets one by one. The sand collapsed into different shapes every time a bucket was removed.

    In his 1986 work “Kamor,” he created a live volcano with a burst of flame and a plume of smoke by causing an explosion at the summit of a small mountain in the Swiss canton of Appenzell.

    Born in 1938 in Appenzell, Switzerland, Signer worked as an architect’s draughtsman, a radio engineer apprentice and had a short stint in a pressure cooker factory before he began studying art. His works were shown in leading contemporary art exhibitions such as the Venice Biennials in 1976 and 1999 and Kassel Documenta in 1987.

    Signer’s life as an artist did not begin until he was 50. He did various jobs before that and thanks to his experiences, his accumulated knowledge become a source of inspiration.

    A long table of the same size as one in his home is displayed on the gallery’s third floor and holds 34 important publications about his works and life.

    Li Zhenghua, the exhibition’s curator, said that Signer granted artistic value to apparently non-artistic items through combinations of experimental and media art.

    “Signer’s works were experiments that followed pre-designed procedures but left the results of open to uncertainties,” Li said. “Most of Signer’s works were produced in the wilderness with no spectators, except his cameraman and aides; he took pleasure from the actions in his own way and didn’t create art for the sake of observance.”

    Time: Till Oct. 11

    Hours: 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. (Closed on Mondays, open on holidays)

    Venue: OCT Art & Design Gallery, 9009-1 Shennan Boulevard, Overseas Chinese Town (南山区华侨城深南大道9009-1号)

    Metro: Luobao Line, OCT Station, Exit C (罗宝线华侨城站C出口)