Dieter Roth

Ein Versuch

Jan 15th – Mar 12th, 2013

Fliegertransport

Fliegertransport, 1969

Silkscreen and cheese on paper, edited reproduced drawing

40 x 44,5 cm

Edition: 25

„Then he shaved off all his hair. (…) And there he was, lying around one day in the Galerie 33, which he had started in Berne, without hair and said: “I’m ashamed that I got so drunk yesterday” and that’s his problem, and mine too. Not the drinking, that’s more of a fact than a problem, but because you imagine everything so nice, how it should be and could be, and then everything is different! But when you’re a drinker, you know that nothing goes as planned and there are no longer any surprises, because you’re already prepared for surprises. But at that time, on that morning, when he was ashamed of himself in the Galerie 33, it was still a surprise that everything happened differently than he thought, and that’s why he hung his head and didn’t want to say anything more to me than that. (…)

And then he had children and a wife, and landed temporarily forever in Iceland. (…)And that did him good, because he still believed he didn’t need anyone, and he wanted to do everything on his own, and when I wrote him once that we are all somehow in the same boat, he responded that that was typical of me, and maybe this answer is typical of him, and wonderful, because it’s true in his case, and who knows anyway…“ (Text: Daniel Spoerri)
excerpt: Anekdotomania. Daniel Spoerri über Daniel Spoerri, Museum Jean Tinguely Basel, Osterfildern-Ruit 2001, p. 256-258

Dieter Roth, born in Hanover in 1930, lived and worked as performative and conceptual artist, graphic artist and writer in Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland, the United States et al. Lectureships at Yale University, New Haven, Watford School of Art, London and the Academy of Arts Düsseldorf. Artist for the Swiss Pavilion at the Biennale di Venezia in 1982. Retrospectives in Basel, Cologne, New York, Lucerne, Salzburg amongst others. In 2013 he is honoured with a grand solo exhibition at Museum of Modern Art, New York.

On the occasion of the exhibition a catalogue is published at Kerber Verlag.