With his Snare Pictures (French: Tableaux piège), continuously developed since 1960, Spoerri inscribed himself into the history of art. The exhibition in the Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien enlarges the perspective on this artist and inspired collector who works in almost all artistic media and whose diverse work has focused for the last sixty years on social interactions and the sensuous perception of everyday things – especially pertaining to people’s sense of taste. Besides his assemblages and collages composed of everyday materials, the exhibition will also present his bronze sculptures produced as of 1970, the works related to script and textiles, and his actions, often performed in collaboration with other artists.

This transmedial approach is also inscribed into Daniel Spoerri’s biography: namely, he studied classical dance (encouraged among others by Max Terpis), directed theatre pieces, published objects by Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Dieter Roth and Victor Vasarely in the MAT edition founded by him in 1958 (Multiplication d’art transformable), co-signed the manifesto of the Nouveau Réalisme in 1960, in 1962 created a literary counterpart to his Snare Pictures in An Anecdoted Topography of Chance, worked with Fluxus artists like Emmett Williams and Robert Filliou, founded countless restaurants, dreamed up Eat Art, and to this day continues to host banquets.

Daniel Spoerri taught from 1978 to 1982 in Cologne, where he organised exhibition projects and banquets with students; from 1983 to 1989 he was professor at The Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. His works were presented in many international exhibitions, including the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1990), mumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (2002) and MOCAK – Museum of Contemporary Art, Krakow (2015). The Daniel Spoerri Archive has been held since 1996 in the graphic collection in the Swiss National Library in Bern and is continually updated. Alternating temporary exhibitions have been organised since 2009 in Hadersdorf am Kamp in the Spoerri Ausstellungshaus, spotlighting Daniel Spoerri’s works in dialogue with renowned fellow artists.