Laib sieving hazelnut pollen, Installation: Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1992 »Copyright
When he first entered the public eye with his unique art in the mid 1970s, Laib was risking a great deal. In an art scene dominated by brash, cool, conceptually freighted art that toyed with radicality, in an occasionally cynical way, Laib presented art that was uncompromisingly contemplative in character. This held especially for his legendary Pollen Fields, a series begun in 1977 in which the timeless form of the rectangle was combined with the hypnotic luminosity of natural pollen. Abstraction, the essence of nature, and the magic of a spiritual gesture, entered an indivisible unity in these works. And they are still capable of inspiring a fresh, inward vision today.
