Dieter Roth (April 21, 1930 – June 5, 1998) was a Swiss artist, born in Hannover, Germany, best known for his artist’s books, prints, sculptures, and works made of found materials, including rotting food stuffs.

In 1954 he met the artist Daniel Spoerri, who would later set up Editions MAT, a publishing house for editioned books and sculptures, which would print some of Roth’s early works.  In 1957 Roth married an Icelandic woman, Sigríour Björnsdóttir, and moved with her to Reykjavik, where he founded the publishing company, forlag ed.

Many people think that the conceptual work of Dieter Roth and Ed Ruscha in the 1950s and 1960s mark the foundation of the genre of artists’ books.  Roth distinctive contribution was his examination of the formal qualities of books themselves. In a number of the works he published, he dispensed with the codex, and allowed the arrangement of pages to be random, made by the reader, or created books with holes throughout, allowing the viewer to see more than one page at the same time. The disruption of the codex’s authority was an important part of the definition of artists’ books. Roth’s most notorious artist’s book was the Staple Cheese (A Chase) for a 1970 exhibition at the Eugenia Butler Gallery in Los Angeles. It consisted of a series of suitcases filled with cheese, as well as wall mounted cheese intended to drip over a horizontal line below. A different case was opened each day to reveal different states of decay. In less than three weeks, the gallery was ‘practically impossible to enter with prospective viewers having to contend with flies, larvae and maggots as well as the smell.

Josh Smith was born in 1976 in Okinawa, Japan. Best known for his semi-abstract paintings which feature pictograph-like symbols, Smith also makes sculptures, collages, ceramics, books, prints and posters, and is an accomplished draftsman.

Smith’s father was in the US Army, and his family moved frequently, eventually settling in East Tennessee, where the artist mostly grew up. He studied at the Miami University in Ohio, and later at the University of Tennessee.

Smith’s work has been presented in many solo exhibitions, including the Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, Germany (2016); Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma, Rome (2015); Zabludowicz Collection, London (2013); The Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich, Connecticut (2011); Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, Geneva (2009); De Hallen Haarlem, Haarlem, The Netherlands (2009-2010); Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (mumok), Vienna (2008); and SculptureCenter, Long Island City, New York (2004). He has been included in many notable group exhibitions, including the 2011 Venice Biennale, and The Generational: Younger Than Jesus, New Museum, New York (2009). Josh Smith’s works are held in the collections of the Broad Museum, Los Angeles, the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, among others. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.