IN THE STUDIO: Wolfgang Laib

Starting with new artworks by artists, that are on exhibition or are ready exhibited or that are work in progress… we are visiting their studios, interacting with them and we present you this path. This very difficult period with international lockdown we started an interesting interactive dialogue for their artworks and we trying to discover their works of the previews years. On the other side there are international artists who transfer a message from their studios as Wolfgang Laib with the collaboration of Thaddeus Ropac Gallery. Wolfgang Laib’s “Pollen Fields” bring natural forms indoors, created from pollen that the artist gathered from the fields by hand. The artist produced his first “Pollen Field” in 1977 and has since collected pollen on a yearly basis from the forests and meadows near his home in southern Germany. This sustained engagement with nature has become an important element in his daily life. The pollen is exhibited in a variety of ways, best known as a radiant field sifted onto the floor in a softened rectangular form, providing an intense experience of emotive colur. When the exhibition concludes, he retrieves the pollen, cleans it, and stores it in glass jars. Laib’s largest pollen installation to date was presented at MoMA, New York, in 2013. Watch Laib installing one of his pollen sculptures in the trailer for his exhibition “Without Time, Without Place, Without Body”, which took place across several locations in Florence from October 2019 to January 2020.

Wolfgang Laib, Without Time, Without Place, Without Body, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac