Rice House, 2001, White marble, rice, 24 x 28 x 73,5 cm
Rice House, 2001, White marble, rice, 19 x 18,5 x 96,5 cm »Copyrights
Laib’s Rice Houses bring reliquary shrines or tombs to mind, yet the examples shown here are not hollow but made of solid marble. The artist recurs to a traditional form while divorcing it from its familiar function. In this way he brings a visual code that conveys a yearning for the eternal into the modern museum space, without having to profane this yearning in the process. As far as the small heaps of rice adjacent to the shrines are concerned, these link the stone objects with the simple presence of a handful of basic food – in which the theme of the offering likewise reverberates.
