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(Long Island City, NY, March,
2004) – Roth Time: A Dieter Roth Retrospective opens
in its only U.S. venues, MoMA QNS and P.S.1 Contemporary
Art Center, on March 12, 2004, and remains on view through
June 7. The first comprehensive survey in the United States
to highlight the work of Dieter Roth (1930–1998),
one of the most influential European artists of the postwar
period, spans 50 years of his oeuvre. The exhibition presents
approximately 375 artworks, including five large-scale installations
at P.S.1, and explores the full range of Roth’s creative
accomplishments—paintings, drawings, graphic works,
books, sculptures, installations, and film and video works.
This is the first exhibition to be presented jointly at
MoMA and P.S.1.
The exhibition was organized by Schaulager Basel, Switzerland,
in collaboration with The Museum of Modern Art and Museum
Ludwig, Cologne, Germany. Roth Time is organized for The
Museum of Modern Art by Gary Garrels, Chief Curator, Department
of Drawings, and Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture,
and for P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center by Klaus Biesenbach,
P.S.1 Chief Curator. Roth Time was the debut exhibition
at Schaulager Basel and was subsequently presented at Museum
Ludwig.
Roth Time celebrates a radical individualist who spurned
international art capitals and movements, and instead followed
his own creative path in Iceland and Switzerland. In recent
years Roth’s critical reputation has grown, and his
restlessness and inventiveness have influenced a new generation
of artists. The MoMA QNS portion of the exhibition charts
the development of Roth’s work from its beginnings
in the mid-1940s through the late 1990s. At P.S.1, five
of the most complex, large-scale sculpture and media works
are presented in an integrated installation.
Mr. Garrels says, “Art and life for Roth flowed readily
into each other and were impossible to separate. His work
has a diversity and a logical coherence that establish him
as one of the most singular and important artists of the
second half of the century.” Regarding the installations
on view at P.S.1, Mr. Biesenbach adds, “They bring
together different periods of his life, showing where and
how he worked, where and how he lived, when he left and
when he returned. These ever-changing works possess the
quality of self-portraits of the artist.”
The P.S.1 presentation of Roth Time comprises five of the
artist's largest and most complex works exploring the subjects
of time, decay, and the diary. In 1970 Roth began work on
Gartenskulptur (Garden sculpture), a project that
would continue even beyond his death. Continuously augmented
and developed over a period of almost thirty years, Gartenskulptur
is a meditation on collection, decay, and metamorphosis.
The installation’s first manifestation was a bust
Roth formed from birdseed and chocolate that was placed
on an outdoor platform for birds to pick apart. Over time
Roth added to the sculpture, placing various small art pieces
and pre-installation sketches and drawings of the work itself
on and around the platform. Every incarnation of the piece
incorporates materials found on site, and the waste that
results from Gartenskulptur’s exposure to
the elements is recycled back into the work through a system
of tunnels and preserving jars, allowing the work to grow
with every installation. Installed with the assistance of
Björn Roth, the artist’s son and collaborator,
Gartenskulptur shares its exhibition space with
the workshop where its progress is monitored and developed.
In the same gallery is Fussboden (Floor, 1975–92),
a wooden studio floor covered with pigment and glue. To
create this piece, Roth literally removed the floor from
his studio in Iceland and installed it directly in front
of a gallery wall, as one would place a painting. This textured,
ruptured canvas functions as a record of Roth’s actions
from 1975 to 1992 and asserts that a studio floor is just
as much a work of art as the works produced upon its surface.
In 1973 Roth began a long-term project known as Flacher
Abfall (Flat waste), for which he collected food packaging
and other found scraps, subsequently encasing them in over
600 binders and filing them in bookshelves. This piece addresses
Roth’s artistic role as collector, cataloguer, and
archivist. Preserving the refuse that he and others had
left behind, Roth created both an autobiographical record
and an environment in which the viewer is forced to confront
the ephemeral nature of existence through exposure to the
collection of garbage.
Reykjavik, Iceland, was an important place in the artist’s
professional and private life. Reykjavik Slides
(1973–75 and 1990–93) comprises 30,000 photographic
slides purporting to document every single building in the
Icelandic capital. Solo Szenen (Solo scenes, 1997–98),
also shot primarily in Reykjavik, is an installation composed
of 131 video monitors and players stacked in a grid of three
wooden shelves, each presenting continuous footage of the
artist going about his daily routine. Solo Szenen,
the culmination of a series of written, film, and video
diaries that Roth began in the early 1980s, is his attempt
at illustrating life as the accumulation of vast quantities
of fragments of data.
Sponsorship:
The exhibition is organized by Schaulager Basel in collaboration
with The Museum of Modern Art and Museum Ludwig, Cologne.
The exhibition is made possible by Schaulager Basel and
the Laurenz Foundation. Additional generous support is provided
by Kathleen and Richard Fuld, Novartis, and The Contemporary
Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art. The Museum also
acknowledges the assistance of Mimi and Peter Haas, Pro
Helvetia, and The International Council of The Museum of
Modern Art. The accompanying educational programs are made
possible by BNP Paribas. The installations at P.S.1 are
supported by James Family Foundation.
For more information, please contact Rachael Dorsey, P.S.1
Press Office, at press@ps1.org
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