About the Work
What at first sight looks like gestural painting with thickly applied paint turns out, upon closer inspection, to be what Dieter Roth calls a 'decay picture'. Instead of oil paint, he used yoghurt, cheese and a charred wooden branch. From the mid-1960s onwards, Roth began producing his series of mould pictures, which are dedicated obsessively to the processes of decay and decomposition. Over the course of time, compositions made from perishable food are inevitably eaten up and destroyed by larvae, beetles and maggots. The viewer's sense of smell is brought into play in a highly pungent way, making him aware of his other organs. The artist submitted his works to a kind of life process whose transience is also a part of the concept. He thus ultimately challenges the museum's determination to conserve them.
