Dieter Roth. Selbstturm; Löwenturm
Well over a thousand small photos and video stills in an oversized yet narrow portrait format document the obsessive approach and unprettified aesthetic of Dieter Roth, without coming across as a book by Roth. The images provide an exhaustive record of a former studio of Roth’s in Basel that was sold in its entirety. In this space, Roth sporadically worked on two series of small sculptures – the ’Selves’ and the ’Lions’ – which he cast out of chocolate and sugar and then stored on two tower-like shelves. From Roth’s death in 1998, the slowly disintegrating sculptures were open to the public, until a technical fault with the air conditioning in 2007 made a (paradoxical) restoration necessary. This monumental book presents Roth’s repetitive life-size photos of the sculptures in two columns per page; the smaller video stills are laid out in three columns. The reproduction of the material is very direct, and the essay section includes facsimiles of Roth’s written terms of sale and use for the studio. Despite the rigid structure, there are occasional irregularities and pauses in the page layout, and the cinematographic presentation skilfully foregrounds the element of time that lies at the heart of the work.
