Wolfgang Laib City of Silence

the simpler it is — the more essential it is
— Wolfgang Laib

This exhibition will present a new group of installations reprising recurring motifs from internationally acclaimed German artist Wolfgang Laib’s poetic and highly symbolic oeuvre. Occupying the floor of the Paris Marais gallery will be Laib’s gently fragrant beeswax sculptures, while along the walls, a series of new works on paper will provide a more intimate insight into the artist’s meditative and conceptual practice.

Laib employs simple, organic materials in his work that are often linked to sustenance, such as pollen, milk, beeswax and rice. Each component is imbued with aesthetic power but also carries a wealth of associations connecting past and present, ephemeral and eternal. In City of Silence, the artist references places of dwelling and worship that are connected to his own experiences of the Middle East, as well as in India and Southeast Asia, which he visited throughout his youth. The title of the exhibition, in particular, recalls the ancient, circular burial sites in India and ancient Persia known as the Towers of Silence. Open to the elements, they represent the link that Laib identifies in many ancient architectural forms connected to the afterlife as ‘the bond of the sky with the earth’. His own beeswax structures have been described by poet and art critic Donald Kuspit as representing ‘the enlightenment, transcendence, and selflessness the monk pursues through meditation – the inner solitude necessary for higher consciousness.’ Together with the delicate drawings in pollen yellow and milky white, they form a poetic landscape, imbued with spirituality, inviting visitors to become, as Kuspit continues, ‘participating observers in search of our own sacred significance’.

Rather than a creator or innovator, Laib considers himself a vehicle for ideas of universality and timelessness already present in nature. ‘The pollen, the milk, the beeswax,’ he explains, ‘they have a beauty that is incredible, that is beyond imagination, something which you cannot believe is a reality – and it is the most real. I could not make it myself, I could not create it myself, but I can participate in it.’ It is this philosophy that fuels the artist’s ties to the aesthetics of Minimalism, which seeks to attain a form of truth through visual purity and geometric harmony. Following a similarly rigorous formal process of conception and installation, Laib distinguishes himself through his use of materials, reminding us that there is still art being made in defiance of this profane world – an intimate art that can afford spiritual sustenance.