Roman Signer: Icelandic Works
Curator: Gavin Morrison
4th July – 27th September, 2026
Skaftfell Centre for Visual Art
Seyðisfjörður, Iceland
Roman Signer (b. 1938) is a Swiss artist who describes himself an Aktionskünstler, an action artist. He makes films, videos, photographs and installations of choreographed events: things falling out of equilibrium, mundane objects subjected to unusual acts and to juxtaposing forces. These actions are inflicted upon a recurrent lexicon of things: tables, stools, Wellington boots, kayaks, umbrellas. Everything is normal but in unexpected circumstances.
Signer is recognised as one of the most significant contemporary artists and since the early 1990s he has been visiting Iceland to travel and also to make work. Iceland has become more than a backdrop for videos; it is almost a protagonist in his work. This relationship has generated some of his most important works such as: A kayak trip to Snæfellsnes in 2000, a video installation with a battered kayak. The video shows the artist in a kayak being dragged around the gravel roads of Snæfellsnes. It is absurd, poetic and joyous.
This exhibition exists as a retrospective of work that he has made during trips to Iceland. Many of these trips have begun in Seyðisfjörður. The exhibition will include early super-8 films, installations, sculpture and photographs. It will provide a means to consider the role landscape plays within his work and the nature of his special relationship with Iceland.
In conjunction with this exhibition a new edition of the book: when you travel in Iceland you see a lot of water, will be published. The book is a dialogue between the Icelandic artist Tumi Magnusson and Signer as they travel around Iceland.
Roman Signer lives and works in St. Gallen, Switzerland. He attended Schule für Gestaltung, Zürich in 1966 and went on to study sculpture at the Schule für Gestaltung, Lucerne and then to the Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw, Poland. He has an extensive exhibition record. Significant solo exhibitions include: Kunsthaus Zürich, 2025; Barbican Centre, London, 2015; China Academy of Arts, Hangzhou, 2014; Swiss Institute, New York, 2010; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2009;. He represented Switzerland at the 1999 Venice Biennale. Signer has twice previously exhibited at Skaftfell: Birgir Andrésson, Tumi Magnússon og Roman Signer, 2010, and RÓ RÓ, 2014.
