Wolfgang Laib

For the German artist Wolfgang Laib (1950), work and art are inextricably connected. Though he originally trained to be a physician, Laib intentionally chose a career in art as a place to find meaning and purpose. Trips to India and Southeast Asia with his parents brought him into contact with spiritual and non-Western traditions at an early age. Yet his work is not rooted in any single tradition: Western mysticism and the utopian leanings of early 20th-century art have shaped his thinking as well.

Laib works with simple, organic materials such as pollen, milk, rice and beeswax (see Wachsraum). He uses these basic elements to create sober, fragile and almost sacred works (see Blütenstaub von Kiefern). Certain forms and interventions recur time and again in his oeuvre. He pours a shallow layer of milk onto a marble slab and uses pollen to either make small fragile heaps on the floor or to create large fields of colour. The artist also builds rooms and staircases from beeswax and combines rice with tiny golden boats and forms resembling reliquaries.

Laib lives in isolation, surrounded by the Black Forest in Southern Germany. Each year, the artist dedicates himself to laboriously collecting pollen from the fields around his house – a slow, painstaking process that reflects the core of his artistic practice. His methods centre on ritual and repetition: he seeks continuity rather than innovation. Inspired by Eastern philosophies, he renders the timelessness of nature visible. With a minimum of means, he directs our attention to the beauty of what is already there and to the possibilities of a thoughtful existence.