Wolfgang Laib
Paso traspaso
Wolfgang Laib has reflected on life while traveling through different countries and learning from the various systems of thought he found there: Islam, Buddhism and Christianity.
His personal ideology provides a focus for his work by linking the permanent (for example, marble) with the perishable (for example, milk).
Laib creates magical spaces engendered by the materials he often turns to, natural products of such great purity that they can come to symbolize the spiritual concept of purity. They appeal to our mind as well as to our senses, not only sight but also touch and smell.
This artist brings his creative process to fruition in the spaces where East and West meet, in the encounters between the open and the closed, the solid and the liquid, the masculine and feminine, where yin meets yang. His works explore ways of life foreign to Western culture, and they create an atmosphere in which profound experiences can take place, by guiding our gaze toward meditative domains.
Laib’s exhibitions come into being from the very moment each object is put into its assigned space through the caring placement of the objects: arranging grains of rice on a board, spilling milk onto marble slabs, scattering pollen or piling it up into heaps. Through these acts, the works acquire a specific character in space and generate special relationships between themselves.
With its simplicity and range of minimalistic variations, the work of Wolfgang Laib is opposed to what our contemporary world considers absolutely necessary: constant innovation, the need to be always original.
From texts by Ursula Seller and Barbara Catoir
Artist: Wolfgang Laib (Germany, 1950)
