Wolfgang Laib, Crossing the River - Excerpt Credit: Wolfgang Laib, Crossing the River, 2022, Art Museum Graubünden
Wolfgang Laib’s work is characterized by a profound relationship with nature and a declared belief in simplicity. Ever since his journeys to India as a young man in the 1970s, Eastern philosophies have shaped his life and his artistic practice concentrated on just a few cyclical series of works made of natural materials such as pollen, rice, milk or bees wax.
Considering humans as part of a larger whole, Laib (*1950, Germany) also searches holistic understanding in Christian culture. With this site-specific installation, made of a laid-out field of thousands of rice grains, the artist manifests the spiritual dimension of his art and leads us to the sources of his poetics where a juxtaposition between a small mound of color-intensive pollen and a Carolingian Eucharist casket produces an astonishing relationship.
The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated publication by Lars Müller Publishers with essays by Damian Jurt and Stephan Kunz, a conversation between Wolfgang Laib and Peter Zumthor as well as numerous installation views.
