Dieter Roth (1930 – 1998) was one of the great universal artists of the 20th century. He was a graphic artist and designed furniture, he painted and drew, he created sculptures and expansive installations, working with all sorts of materials. He was a poet, a musician and a publisher and he filmed, photographed and collected. In manifold ways his work continually revolves around the self. At times ironically, yet frequently also relentlessly, Dieter Roth questions himself and what he does – his artistic practice as well as his everyday activities – both in his creative work and in journals and autobiographical texts.

Conceived as a retrospective, the exhibition at the Aargauer Kunsthaus covers the full range of media in which Dieter Roth worked. It starts with early drawings and reaches a first point of culmination with the chocolate busts from the late 1960s in which the artist subjected his own image – as a “birdfeed bust” – to decay. In an extensive group of works from the following years titled “Selbstbildnis als …” he split up the one “self” into a whole series of different “selves,” thereby even more radically calling into question any glorification of the individual. As Roth became increasingly interested in recording the events of life in an artistic manner, the journals took on central significance in his late work. The exhibition concludes with the large-scale panoptical display of his 128-part video installation titled Solo Szenen (1997 – 98), in which Roth’s autobiographical observations and reflections culminate in an uncompromising look at himself and his own existence.

Self-interrogation thus became a concern of overriding importance to Dieter Roth and the way in which he unrelentingly made his own self the focus of his work, while at the same time deconstructing it by all available means, is unique.

The exhibition was organized in collaboration with Dirk Dobke and the Dieter Roth Foundation and will subsequently travel to Salzburg, Austria, where it will be on view at the Museum der Moderne.