This presentation brings together works specially created by the artist for the museum’s very special architecture, in dialogue with that ode to nature and beauty formed by Monet’s Nymphéas.
In the works of Wolfgang Laib (born in Germany in 1950), nature invades art.
Laib employs simple, yet highly symbolic, organic materials that are usually associated with sustenance, such as pollen, milk, beeswax and rice. He arranges a limited number of elements in a formal way, following a rigorous process of conception and installation.
His work is profoundly connected to his experiences in India and Southeast Asia. He considers himself a vehicle for ideas of universality and timelessness already present in nature. 'The pollen recalls the beginning and creation; the rice mountains and the beeswax Ziggurat (pyramid and steps) nourishment and the bond of the sky with the earth; in the end, fire recalls destruction and the possible renewal of the world, the transformation of what is physical to a new cycle, to a state of change.' Channelling these principles, his works invite a contemplative, even meditative, engagement.