Wolfgang Laib

About

Wolfgang Laib’s quiet, meditative work makes him one of the most fascinating artists of our time. The exhibition is centered on sculptures from his Rice Houses series. The mostly elongated, slightly stocky, gable-shaped objects are reminiscent in size and shape of precious reliquary shrines. In fact, the sculptures positioned on the floor are objects made of wood, filled inside with rice and covered with sealing wax, Burmese lacquer, tin, aluminum, or silver. Sealed in this manner, the objects retain an inner something that remains inaccessible to viewers but which holds significant power in the imagination. The reduced outer form and precious materiality imbue the Rice Houses with a certain auratic power. Inherent to the sculptures is a seemingly timeless, original—and universal—quality.

Cyclicality typifies the artistic work of Wolfgang Laib, a quality that applies to the pollen works, the milk stones, or beeswax works. The first Rice Houses were created by Laib in 1984. He has repeatedly returned to this group of works ever since. Presented in the exhibition is a triangular-shaped Rice House covered in thin aluminum and embedded within small mountains of rice. The work is from the first year of the series and was previously included in the artist’s retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC in 2000 and the Haus der Kunst in Munich in 2002. In keeping with the cyclical nature of the work, this early sculpture is placed in dialogue with other Rice Houses from the last twenty years. The artist is not concerned with innovation or formal developments, but with continuity.

Wolfgang Laib’s approach is remarkable for its merging of Western minimalist art currents and a spirituality sustained by his interests in Eastern—in particular Indian—philosophy, aesthetics, and religion. Representative of this is his egg-shaped, soot-blackened granite sculpture, a Brahmanda. Translated from Sanskrit the title means “Egg of the Universe.” Harald Szeemann, a supporter of Wolfgang Laib for many years as a curator, described him as an artist who “reveals immensely vast expanses through the smallest sculptural gestures.” A wall work comprising five triangular objects sealed with Burmese lacquer also demonstrates the artist’s interests in elementary forms that link together the most diverse cultures as well as in exploring form and material as conveyors of archaic knowledge.