This summer White Flag Projects in Saint Louis held an interesting
exhibition called Another Kind of Vapor. Taking inspiration from
Dieter Roth's work the show presented artists who use non-traditional
and decaying materials, such as Paul McCarthy, Ed Ruscha and Dieter
Roth himself.
Roth's piece in the show was a glass jar containing flies collected by
the artist from his legendary work Staple Cheese (A Race), 1970. This
work has disappeared long ago, thrown away in the desert by the
gallery owner, nothing else remains beside this 40-year-old jar full
of dead flies.
Unfortunately Dieter Roth never made this work, it's a fake. We
invented it one evening in a bar with our friend Corazon Del Sol, and
put it together the next day. We bought all the stuff on the internet:
an old glass jar, a vintage cork and lots of flies (yes, you can buy
flies online), and sent the work to the unaware curators.
The piece has been shown for over a month, and nobody questioned its
authenticity or worthiness. The image of the jar with flies started
circulating on the Internet and it's also mentioned in Roth's
biography in Wikipedia.
Maybe one day the jar would have been included in other Dieter Roth
shows, and, who knows, even sold for a lot of money.
Sometimes we tend to prefer facts we wish to be true, rather than
facts we know to be true. Maybe the little jar fulfilled our desire
that the Dieter Roth legendary work wasn't completely lost. Believing
is seeing.
More info
http://www.0100101110101101.org/home/rot
and the exhibition
http://white-flag-projects.org/wfp10/exhibition_details.cfm?eID=53
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