Detail

Dieter Roth is seen as one the great universal artists of the twentieth century. His influence on artistic practice is ongoing today. His work is exceptionally comprehensive and diverse, with prints, painting, installations, sculpture, film, photography, performance, action art, poetry, and music—pretty well every imaginable form and level of artistic expression. He founded Eat Art, with his works made of perishable foodstuffs today still challenging the idea of art made for eternity. Language and literature play a key role in the artist’s work. Roth wrote countless journals, essays, theater plays, and poems; he edited magazines and books. He used writing in many ways in his art. For his “Literature Sausages” he literally processed magazines and novels, cutting them into small pieces of paper, then using these in real sausage recipes instead of the meat, adding spices and fat. The cut-out title of the work, in this case from the “Quick” magazine, was then used as a label on the sausage. The ultimate work in this series is probably “Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Works in 20 Volumes”, Hegel‘s collected works hanging as sausages in a wooden frame. Alongside the principle of plenty, the reuse of found materials is a key element of Roth’s work. It deliberately takes into account natural transformation processes, as in his “Mold Pictures”, which use organic materials like cheese, chocolate, and fat. Environmental influences, organic matter—and time—thus become co-shapers of Roth’s ephemeral art.