Dieter Roth @ Fruitmarket Edinburgh

Dieter Roth Diaries 2 August–14 October 2012 The Fruitmarket Gallery 45 Market Street, Edinburgh,  http://www.fruitmarket.co.uk ... http://www.fruitmarket.co.uk/exhibitions/archive/ 

The Fruitmarket Gallery is proud to present this exhibition of the work of Dieter Roth (1930–1998), one of late-twentieth-century art's major figures. Roth was an artist of astonishing breadth and diversity, producing books, graphics, drawings, paintings, sculptures, assemblages, and installation works involving video, sounds, and recordings. He was also a composer, musician, poet, and writer ... Art and life for Roth flowed readily into each other, and much of the material for his artistic output came from his everyday life. This exhibition is the first to focus on the theme of the diary in Roth's work. Roth kept a diary throughout his life, and saw all art-making as a form of diary keeping. His diaries were a space to record appointments, addresses, lists, and deadlines but also ideas, drawings, photographs, and poems. They teem with graphic exuberance, and proved a rich source for his work. The Fruitmarket Gallery is fortunate in being able to show Roth's diaries to the public for the first time, as well as the hand-produced, photocopied 'copybooks' he made from them to sell to favoured collectors and friends, and two major installation works. Many of Roth's major works can be understood as kinds of diaries.