Restaurant Spoerri

»Restaurant Spoerri« belongs to the group of »Trap Pictures« which brought the Swiss object artist Daniel Spoerri international recognition. Beginning in the 1960s Spoerri captured everyday situations in these works by fixing crockery, leftover food, and thus the remains of an evening meal, on a panel, presenting it as a wall picture.

For the founder of so-called Eat Art and the co-initiator of Nouveau Réalisme, an apparently banal event—a meal shared with others—becomes an object worthy of art. In the 1960s Spoerri not only staged numerous culinary banquets which provided him with material for his art. In 1968 he even opened his own restaurant in Düsseldorf which the title of this work alludes to. But what exactly is it that falls into the “trap” in this work?

It is the moment, it is time which the artist fixes and thus brings to a halt. The fleeting present is captured and exhibited, living on as a memory of an evening. In this sense, Spoerri’s three-dimensional still life is a genuine memento mori which reminds us of the transience of life, while simultaneously arresting it through the resistance of art.