Humour that's impossible to analyse

A small motorised lawnmower scurries across the parquet floor, spinning this way and that and occasionally bumping into the chairs that are located along each wall. Situated at one end of the room is a doggy basket where the cute red mower, after its countless rotations, might eventually come to rest.

This installation is the work of Swiss artist Roman Signer, who likes to set up art pranks in which ordinary materials are made to do things that are, if not exactly extraordinary, able to provide a titter of amusement.

If the antics of the mower don't quite do it for you, perhaps the bottle that's suspended by a piece of string and spins above a fan might.

The four video shorts may also tickle you - one of them shows the artist shooting at a tin can with a pistol but failing to hit the target. This is because - and this is the funny bit - he does so while wearing one of those vibrating slimming devices around his waist.

Signer remains a largely unknown figure in Britain, though it might not come as much of a surprise that he once taught Swiss art duo Fischli & Weiss, whose humorous outlook is in a similar vein.

If art is difficult to analyse, then the humour within it is, perhaps, impossible. While others tittered, this reviewer left grimly stony-faced.

Roman Signer
Hauser & Wirth
Piccadilly, W1J 9EY