PRESS RELEASE
Wolfgang Laib
14 October – 17 November 2000
Artist reception: Saturday, 14 October, 6 to 8 pm
Anthony Meier Fine Arts is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition with German artist Wolfgang Laib. The show takes place in conjunction with an installation at the University Art Museum in Berkeley and precedes a retrospective exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. starting October 25th.
Laib brings a strong sense of spirituality to his work reflecting his interest in Eastern and early Christian religions as well as his abiding interest in nature. He works in a cyclical manner, which is repeated year after year and includes spending the spring and summer months outside in the forests and meadows near his house collecting pollen. Using beeswax, rice, pollen, marble and milk, Laib creates sculptures, which highlight the beauty of his medium by using simplistic yet referential forms such as houses, boats, and mounds. The forms take little from the materials in their organic state.
Laib will exhibit four sculptures, one of which will be a “Milkstone” floor piece. This is a signature piece for Laib as it is one of the first works he made when he became an artist in 1975. Laib has made many of the same pieces over the years believing in the meditative aspects of repetition. The “Milkstone” is made from a square piece of white Italian marble that is gently sanded down so that a slight concave indentation is created on the surface. The piece is then filled to the rim with milk so that the top has a stunning shinny white surface. Also included will be three beeswax sculptures of which two are “Ziggurats” and one that consists of four ships suspended in air by scaffolding.