Wolfgang Laib: Transcendent Offerings

Art in America, March, 2001 by Carol Diehl

Beeswax, from which church candles are made, is another material Laib uses lavishly, building chunky, honey-brown slabs of it into ceiling-high ziggurats, forming it into casketlike boats elevated above our heads on slender wooden supports, or lining the walls and ceilings of crypt-shaped rooms. The beeswax infuses the containing spaces with a rich, warm fragrance that becomes almost overwhelming when one enters Somewhere Else (La Chambre des Certitudes), 1997, and is completely surrounded by it. Meant for only one person at a time, it is a short corridor, narrow and high-ceilinged, such as might be found under an Egyptian pyramid; like a sarcophagus, this enclosure becomes narrower toward its blocked-off end. The atmosphere is close; the illumination provided by a single bare bulb is mostly absorbed by the amber beeswax, heightening the eerie effect. Gently ironic, Laib has created a feast for the senses in the guise of an enclosure for death, a theme that he reiterates in his rows of beeswax boats on their silent journey to the netherworld.

Yet there is nothing grim about Laib's work. More about surrender than sorrow, it's a celebration of life in all its sensuous richness, with death accepted as an integral part of nature's cycle. The perishable and ephemeral materials Laib employs indicate his comfort with impermanence; he cultivates the moment. The labor that goes into Laib's art is a form of meditation, its own reward; he is content to spend countless hours collecting pollen (it can take months to fill a few small jars) and then shaping it into tiny cone-shaped hills for a piece, such as The Five Mountains Not to Climb On (1984), that a single sneeze could blow away. Requiring a form of labor that would be impossibly tedious to most of us, Laib's work with pollen, in particular, embodies an intrinsic awareness that it will exist only as long as its creator is available to make it happen.

Laib, who follows no particular religion or spiritual practice, believes in the transcendent power of art and its ability to heal. Viewed this way, his pieces are like offerings, modest and simple enough that they require the viewer to look at art differently, slowing down to Laib's pace. Once one is acclimated, however, it becomes momentarily difficult to look at anything else; nearby works in the museum--Gustons, de Koonings--appear ego-driven and overwrought. "The more you complicate things, the more you lose," Laib says. "In renouncing you achieve more."

All quotations are from conversations with the artist in October and December 2000.

"Wolfgang Laib: A Retrospective," curated by Klaus Ottman and organized by the American Federation of Arts, New York, opened at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. [Oct. 26, 2000-Jan. 22, 2001], and is currently at the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, through May 6. Subsequently it will travel to the Dallas Museum of Art [May 29-Sept. 2]; the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, Ariz. [Oct. 5-Dec. 30]; the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla and San Diego [Jan. 25-Apr. 21, 2002]; and the Haus der Kunst, Munich [Oct. 8, 2002-Jan. 5, 2003].