NYAB Event - Wolfgang Laib "Frieze of Life"

Wolfgang Laib "Frieze of Life"

Sean Kelly Gallery

This event has ended.

Wolfgang Laib's "Frieze of Life" features new work as well as one of the artist's iconic pollen installations.
Frieze of Life will focus on Laib's life-long connections to nature's most fundamental materials – specifically in this case, pollen and ash. Pollen, symbolizing the origin of life, will be utilized in the main gallery with a large-scale pollen field installation. It has been 23 years since one has been exhibited in New York. To create the work, the artist will sift hazelnut pollen, which has been painstakingly collected by hand in the fields near his studio in Germany, onto the floor of the main gallery. The presence of the pollen creates an intense energy that the viewer can both see and feel – Laib explains that it "has an incredible color which I could never paint, because it is far beyond myself, also much more than myself. It is not a pigment and not a 'natural' pigment either, like the sun is not a yellow circle and the sky is not a blue painting."

Ash is the major component of the work in the second gallery – the eponymously titled Frieze of Life. The artist's most recent work, never before shown in the United States, is comprised of a long wooden shelf holding 400 hand-thrown clay pots. The pots are filled with ashes collected from religious temples near the artist's studio in India. The shelf's placement, high on the wall, is a reference to the ornamental band used as a classical architectural device. As ash is a symbol of both the end of life, as well as a symbol of rebirth, Frieze of Life evinces a powerful testament to the natural cycles of existence.

Laib's early training as a physician has given him a unique perspective on these cycles of life and the elements of nature. His oeuvre also includes works made of other universally recognized materials, such as rice, milk, stone and wax. In Klaus Ottmann's words, "for Laib, art is an act of participation and of sharing – participating in nature and sharing that experience with others. Laib's works are not merely visual experiences, but serve as his contributions to social and spiritual change."

[Image: Wolfgang Laib "Pollen from Hazelnut" (2002) 5 jars of hazelnut pollen
dimensions variable WL-102]