[D66] Signals Gallery (1964-66): An Auto-Destructive Art History

[R.O.]

  Signals Gallery (1964-66): An Auto-Destructive Art History


    Exploring the legacy of the radical 1960s London gallery in a group
    show curated by kurimanzutto, Mexico City, at Thomas Dane, London

P
<https://www.frieze.com/contributor/philomena-epps>
BY Philomena Epps <https://www.frieze.com/contributor/philomena-epps> in 
Reviews <https://www.frieze.com/listings-and-reviews> | 09 JUL 18

Thomas Dane Gallery’s exhibition ‘Signals: If You Like I Shall Grow’ 
takes its title from a poem by the Russian Soviet Vladimir Mayakovsky 
that was printed in the second issue of /Signals Newsbulletin/: ‘If you 
like, / I shall grow irreproachably tender: / not a man, but a cloud in 
trousers!’ It accompanied visual documentation of David Medalla’s bubble 
machine sculptures, /Cloud Canyons /(1963–77).

Newsbulletin was an experimental publication produced by Signals 
London – an influential gallery that ran between 1964–66 – as a way of 
documenting their exhibitions, alongside critical essays, poetry and 
reports on science and technology. This illusory encounter between 
Medalla and Mayakovsky embodies the playful, interdisciplinary 
trajectory of Signals (originally named ‘The Centre for Advanced 
Creative Study’). Its diverse and innovative programme brought together 
avant-garde individuals and networks located across Europe, the US and 
Latin America. Group shows were favoured and each exhibition was 
referred to as a ‘pilot’: a means to generate new ideas. Conceived by 
kurimanzutto co-founder Jose Kuri and curated by art historian Isobel 
Whitelegg the exhibition embodies Signals’s generative, expanded 
approach. Assembling more than 80 works borrowed from public and private 
collections, the show traces the diverse constellation of moments, 
conversations and synergies within Signals’ short lifetime and beyond.

Original Signals exhibition pamphlets, 1964–66. Courtesy: William Allen 
Word & Image, London

The first part of the show, at 11 Duke Street, brings together early 
work by Signals’ three founding artists: Medalla, Gustav Metzger and 
Marcello Salvadori. (The other founders were the critic Guy Brett and 
curator Paul Keeler.) It also includes the elongated, blinking electric 
light sculpture by Takis that gave the gallery its name (/Signal/, 
1964). Video footage of Metzger’s /Auto Destructive Art/ (1965) creates 
a productive material parallel with Salvadori’s /Untitled (Trace Project 
series)/ of the same year: an intriguing sculpture made from layers of 
bubbling and crackling Perspex treated with acid. While Metzger and 
Medalla are collected by institutions worldwide, Salvadori faded into 
obscurity after the late 1960s, only showing once (at the Institute of 
Contemporary Arts) after Signals closed.

Installation view of 'Signals: If You Like I Shall Grow', kurimanzutto 
hosted by Thomas Dane Gallery, London, 2018. Courtesy: kurimanzutto, 
Mexico City; photograph: © Plastiques Photography

Lygia Clark’s small folded-matchbox maquettes (/Estructuras de caixas de 
fósforus / preto / blanco/, Black / White Matchbox Structures, 1964) 
share a vitrine with /Tres Torres/ (Three Towers, 1963–70) by Mathias 
Goeritz. The Brazilian Clark and Mexican Goeritz never met, despite 
their shared interest in architecture, so this incidental pairing 
materializes an imaginary and significant connection. The use of 
collage, repurposed paper and unconventional materials by Alejandro 
Otero and Antonio Asis sparks a dialogue with Russian constructivism. 
Two works by Otto Piene, co-founder of the Zero Group, highlight how 
Signals was engrained within a wider experimental network of artistic 
exchange and collective ideas. Liliane Lijn’s/Double Drilling/ (1961) 
indicates her interest in molecular structures, the relationship between 
positive and negative space and the vibrating energy of the void.

The appropriation of scientific and mathematical concepts was a 
recurring motif in Signals’ output, bridging various forms of knowledge 
production. Multiplied forms and material connections recur, with 
artists exploring sequences, inversions and permutations. Mira 
Schendel’s /Untitled/ (from the series /Crosses and Vertices/) (1964–65) 
and/Droguinhas/ (1965–66) open the space at 3 Duke Street, indicating 
her engagement with alternative paradigms, motivated by philosophy, 
metaphysics and spiritual concerns. Dom Sylvester Houédard – known 
simply as dsh – similarly engaged with profound ideas, such as 
dis-ontology and para-art, creating concrete poetry that he punched out 
on his typewriter.

Mira Schendel, /Droguinhas /(Little Nothings), 1965/66. Courtesy: 
Bergamin & Gomide, São Paulo; photography: Ding Musa

The last section of the show at Thomas Dane is a response to ‘Soundings 
Three’, one of Signals’ final exhibitions, which brought together works 
by London- and regionally based UK artists. John Wells and Ivor Davies, 
whose large abstract paintings and sculptural wall pieces are included 
here, would continue to have careers as as professional artists. Other 
polymaths, who worked beyond these neat artist circles, disappeared, 
choosing academia or other creative paths. Malcolm Carder – whose large, 
clear acrylic /Box/ (1969–70) appears like a modular line drawing in 
space – became a scientific illustrator, later collaborating with 
Stephen Hawking. The history of Signals, too, is a story of evaporation. 
An auto-destructive art history, perhaps, yet one that leaves a 
constellation of fragments, ready to be sparked once again.

/Signals: If You Like I Shall Grow 
<https://frieze.com/event/signals-if-you-i-shall-grow> runs at Thomas 
Dane Gallery, London until 21 July./

_/Main image: Gustav Metzger, A Collection of Six Documents by Gustav 
Metzger and/or DIAS (Destruction in Art Symposium), 1961–66. Courtesy: 
William Allen Word & Image, London/

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