2 MAY until 6 JUN 2025
Opening – 2 MAY 2025, 6-9 pm

The second part of LEVY Galerie’s commemorative exhibition will be dedicated to lesser-known works by Daniel Spoerri. It includes the large-scale installation Hutfedern (Hat Feathers) and Originale in Serie (Originals in Series), works which blur the boundaries between multiple and unique.

The Hat Feathers – variation and variety

Whenever Daniel Spoerri went to a flea market, he sought to be surprised. He hoped to find the unexpected — curiosity with a sense for the bizarre. This was also his expectation for everyday objects. Entering a kitchen shop, he would ask: “Where is your kitchen gadgets department?”. “Gadgets”, tools, but also “gags”— because who really needs a device invented solely to decapitate an egg at breakfast? 

Even if one merely wants to buy one knife, the options are endless: paring knife, meat knife, fish knife, snack knife, cheese knife, potato peeling knife, steak knife, chef’s knife, tomato knife – there’s a specialty knife for every task. The variety is as astonishing as it is seemingly superfluous. Daniel Spoerri saw this as the culmination of a Darwinian principle: evolution. He believed this could also be observed in kitchen utensils, which humans constantly seek to embellish and improve. Some themes run like a red thread throughout Spoerri’s work; variation and variety are among them. In 2005, Spoerri created a series of figures using hat models and a collection of different billhooks, which he called Hutfedern (Piumi per capelli/Plumes de Chapeau).  

In Tuscany, Spoerri discovered the Penates and roncole (billhooks) used in the region of Monte Amiata. He recognised their distinct blade shapes. Spoerri learned that the shape of the roncole vary from region to region after which each model is named; Varese, Scansano, Merano, Maremma, Roma, etc. At the time, a manufacturer supplied Spoerri with a map on which the crescent shapes of the blades were geographically assigned as black silhouettes. Spoerri ordered a copy of each. This extensive collection in his studio was soon joined by a number of wooden hat models.

He used the menacingly sharp blades less as skull splitters, and more as jewelry, positioning the “heads” on various bronze stands. In this way, hat models, onelegged stands and roncole came together. 

MULTIPLES – Originals in series

Variety is a key concept in understanding Daniel Spoerri’s work. He was fascinated by within the supposedly identical: saws, knives, plates, cups, hundreds of ‘noodle wheels’, no two alike! 

One of Spoerri’s works consists of a collection of 200 peelers, which he mounted on a wooden panel. The composition of these collections takes on the form of sequences, enumerations of the possible variations of an everyday object. His methodical approach is aligned with the title of Paul Éluard’s 1939 poetry collection, Donner à voir (“to make visible”), which became almost programmatic for Daniel Spoerri. 

Presenting reality as it is — a rather sober approach to art. Reality takes the place of the artist, and chance directs the creation of artworks. Daniel Spoerri gave form to this conception of art in his “trap pictures”.

However, Spoerri was already preoccupied with the idea of variation in the 1950s. This became of central importance to the notion of the multiple— not as mere reproductions, but rather serial productions of three-dimensional originals in limited editions that could be offered at accessible price. The multiple represents a ‘democratisation’ of art.