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“Iwan Wirth was not interfering much in that, except he said, ‘I want a bar!’” —Björn Roth
One of the most incredible, little-known art installations in Basel is Dieter Roth’s (b. 1930, Hannover, Germany; d. 1998, Basel, Switzerland) Selbstturm; Löwenturm [self-tower; lion-tower] (1969-1998), in Roth’s former studio adjacent to the Kunstmuseum. Acquired as a work-in-progress by the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation in 1989, the work is now left in the state at which it existed on Roth’s death in 1998, consisting of two towers of self-portrait heads and lions heads, cast in chocolate and sugar. The Schaulager offers tours of the preserved studio with the works in situ for four people, once per month. Unfortunately, you missed the June tour.
On the opening of its late, great, former Roxy nightclub exhibition space in 2013, Hauser & Wirth enlisted Dieter Roth’s son Björn Roth to install a massive retrospective of his late father’s work. The exhibition, of course, left us with the Roth Bar, and also included recreations of the Selbstturm and Löwenturm. For this video from Hauser & Wirth, Björn talks us through the process of conceiving and executing the exhibition, along with an unprecedented behind-the-scenes view of its building and installation.
