Roman Signer @ Dundee Contemporary Arts

Roman Signer’s particular vocabulary of objects is immediately recognisable: his ubiquitous red canoe, black rubber wellingtons and red tent all evoke less predictable landscapes beyond the gallery walls. Groups of objects act upon one another, articulating processes of energy containment and release. Their alignment alludes to events just past, or yet to occur.

Following Signer’s artistic strategy of presumed correlations, perusing the chain of cause-and-effect gradually reveals the work-as-action. A frayed rope leads to a red canoe, nose to the wall, two rubber coils lying limp in their sockets. A small impact hole and fleck of red paint provide evidence of a collision that attests to the continuing endurance of the white gallery wall.

A second canoe full of brown peaty whisky lies opposite, washed up and stranded; its buoyancy undermined by the element that is supposed to carry it. A moribund fly circles above, perhaps contemplating this study of causality. An air of tragedy surrounds the body-shaped negative space full of liquid, an air that permeates the rest of the exhibition, carried by the scent of stale whisky.

The glossy red canoes, the unsullied tent and wellies as yet un-scuffed suggest journeys not taken and landscapes un-traversed. These shiny mass-produced objects are obstinately perfect. Though the frailty of the human body is implicit in their perfect physical forms, their resistance is ambiguous.

In the next room an army of fungicide-treated wooden fence posts, standing balanced on end, present themselves as a stripped-back plantation forest that has done away with the disorder implicated in having branches. At one corner of this installation the hand of the artist is visible; his slightest touch has left a felled corridor of posts toppled like dominoes. Information assistants patrol the installation’s perimeter, alert to the unwitting visitor who may cause further storm damage.