Big Theatre 1972

Curator: This etching is titled "Big Theatre" by Dieter Roth, who was born in 1930 and died in 1998. It's part of the Tate collection. Editor: It feels unsettling. The stark black and white, the density of the lines, everything is disjointed and chaotic. Curator: Roth often explored fragmentation. The theater, a place of illusion, is presented here as a space where different realities collide. Note the figures, the staging, the sense of spectacle gone awry. Editor: There's a sense of impending doom, a dark commentary perhaps on the nature of performance, maybe even life as performance. I find it viscerally disturbing. Curator: I see that too, but also a restless questioning of structures, of systems of representation. Roth never settled for easy answers. Editor: Indeed. It lingers in the mind, this unsettling, deconstructed theater. Curator: A powerful statement on the anxieties beneath the surface of spectacle.