The Dandy "in Conversation"

"What is this?" This question may have been asked by some people who were confronted with Dieter Meier's art. For example, in Zurich in 1969, when Meier spent five days sitting on the ground in front of the Kunsthaus filling plastic bags with a thousand screws each. Or a year later, when the young Swiss artist asked passers-by in the middle of the boulevard in New York to say the words "Yes" or "No" to him. In return, he gave the volunteers a dollar and a certificate stating that they had just said "Yes" or "No".

Footprint of an artist's life
"What's this all about?", you ask yourself again, in view of the exhibition "In Conversation", which is on show at the Aargauer Kunsthaus in Aarau. Why Dieter Meier in an art museum? The dandy with the jacket and neckerchief, who is known as the singer of electro pioneers Yello and has made a name for himself as an author and Zurich restaurant owner with a cattle farm and vineyard in Argentina? Only a few people know that Meier's first steps in the public eye were the happenings described above and that he was involved in art long before he founded Yello at the end of the 1970s.
The first major Swiss museum exhibition on Dieter Meier aims to change this. The 14 rooms contain photographs, depictions of his conceptual art, experimental films, drawings and music videos from the late 1960s to the present day. Meier has also tried his hand at sculpture. The more or less successful results are exhibited, as are newspaper articles and films documenting the reception of his actions. The artist describes the retrospective as an "accidental footprint of life". .