Wolfgang Laib. The Beginning of Something Else

Wolfgang Laib creates his subtle works  in an exchange with the natural environment and in tune with the seasons. Whether it be gathering pollen for his famous minimalistic, luminous yellow floor works or the lengthy production of his sculptures made of beeswax—respect for nature is the artist’s driving force. Since the late 1970s, Laib’s thinking and art have posed questions about our being and actions as part of fragile living habitats and in this respect could not be more topical.

In this exhibition developed in collaboration  with Wolfgang Laib, the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart is presenting  pieces from the most important work complexes in each of the artist’s creative phases. On view are, for instance, “Rice Houses” and “Ziggurats,” a selection of drawings, as well as a pollen  field. The exhibition also features Laib’s latest works, the  “Towers of Silence.” It thus ties in with an important focus of the collection, since Laib is represented in the Kunstmuseum’s holdings with several exemplary works, and his “Wax Room,” permanently installed since 2005 (in the collection basement),  is one of seven rooms of this kind in existence worldwide.

Film

Wolfgang Laib was born in 1950 in Metzingen, Germany, and has lived in a small village near Biberach in  Baden-Württemberg for over thirty years. For the first time, a film,  realized in connection with the exhibition, shows the artist at work in Upper Swabia and at his second home, in southern India,  documenting these spheres of life that are relevant to his creative work. The film by director Maria Anna Tappeiner is on view at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart from July 20, 2023 onwards, during regular opening hours.