Superflat
Jeffry Mitchell: Hanabuki
Wolfgang Laib: A Retrospective
Performing Photography
Graphic Design in the Mechanical AgeWolfgang Laib: A Retrospective
Stroum Gallery
February 25, 2001 – May 6, 2001
“Wolfgang Laib: A Retrospective” was the first comprehensive survey of the artist’s work to be exhibited in the United States and one of the most extensive presented in Europe as well. Since the mid-1970’s, Wolfgang Laib has created objects and installations using such natural elements as milk, pollen, rice, beeswax, and stone. Laib pours milk into marble vessels, sifts pollen into cone-shaped piles in carefully measured series, forms rice into the shapes of simple dwellings, and builds structures out of beeswax. Characterized by his deep relationship with nature and a commitment to the purity and simplicity he finds in Eastern philosophies, his works also draw inspiration from the formal and ceremonial qualities of non-Western art and ritual. With twenty-four sculptures and installations and twenty-six drawings on view, this exhibition traced Wolfgang Laib’s career. This retrospective came to the Henry as part of six-venue international tour that included the Hirshhorn Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, and the Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany.