The Fondation Beyeler is devoting an extraordinary exhibition to a cross-section through the oeuvre of Wolfgang Laib. Born in 1950, the German artist has become one of the outstanding personalities in the art of the past thirty years. Based on work with natural materials, including pollen, milk, rice and wax, Laib concentrates on a small number of groups of works which he develops into extended cycles. These are presented in the exhibition, giving a sense of how the artist’s installations lend an additional, unfamilar dimension to the modern exhibition space. This effect is inseparable from Laib’s profound spirituality, in which Eastern and Western thought blend into a unity that is characteristic of his art.
Conceived in close collaboration with Wolfgang Laib, the exhibition gives viewers an opportunity to immerse themselves in the work of this artist, who, as Harald Szeemann once pointed out, reveals “in minimal sculptural gestures enormous interior spaces”.
