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The exhibition I LIKE Contradictions at the Falckenberg Collection offers a fresh perspective on the work of Daniel Spoerri (1930–2024) and the enduring relevance of his artistic thinking. After his first career as a classical dancer, Spoerri co-founded the Nouveau Réalistes group in Paris in 1960 together with Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely, and other fellow artists, becoming a defining figure of object art. Spoerri rose to fame with his snare-pictures (Fallenbilder), in which he glued down fleeting everyday scenes – remnants of a feast with plates, glasses, and food scraps – turning them into assemblages and, in a playful yet subversive way, elevating them to art – or anti-art. This exhibition, the last one developed in close consultation with Harald Falckenberg, presents a comprehensive overview of Spoerri’s work from 1959 to 2018, including lesser-known series, across four floors. Placing his art in direct dialogue with works from the Falckenberg Collection – American and German “counterculture artists” ranging from Ray Johnson to Jonathan Meese, the show situates Spoerri’s oeuvre within a broader cultural and political avant-garde that, since the 1960s, has challenged conventions in art, life, and society.
In contrast to abstract art and building on the 1960s readymades and Neo-Dada, Daniel Spoerri created a distinct art genre with his snare-pictures – much like later with Eat Art, which he is credited with founding. He took random situations – snapshots of immediate reality – and fixed them unchanged onto their base, creating a sort of “anti-still life.” The horizontal was turned vertical, and the result was declared a work of art. In so doing, Spoerri, himself a self-taught artist, also questioned the very concept of authorship: his works emerged from collaboration with the people who had just been sitting and eating at the respective tables. Bread crumbs, cigarette butts, and used napkins formed idiosyncratic portraits of society – far removed from …
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Image above: Daniel Spoerri, Restaurant Spoerri, 16. November 1972, 1972 Assemblage auf bemalter Hartfaserplatte (Tableau-piège) | Assemblage on painted fiber board, 70 x 70 x 24 cm, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2025. Courtesy Galerie LEVY.
