On the occasion of this year's Berlin Art Week, we are pleased to present the first solo exhibition of Wolfgang Laib at the Berlin gallery.
Since 1978, the artist and Konrad Fischer Galerie have enjoyed a close collaboration. So far, a total of seven solo exhibitions have taken place in our Düsseldorf gallery, and now we have been able to win Wolfgang Laib for an exhibition in Berlin, also thanks to the exceptional architecture of the former transformer station.
The rooms, which are up to seven meters high, offer the opportunity to present exceptional works in a format that is only possible in an institutional context. The surrounding galleries allow special angles to experience the sculptures of Wolfgang Laib.
Wolfgang Laib, 2015 winner of the Praemium Imperiale, presents an impressive ziggurat made of beeswax over four meters high, modeled on the multi-level temple structures of Mesopotamia. Sublime, it embodies the symbol of transition: the transformation from the mundane to the supernatural and transcendental.
Laib's works cannot be separated from the artist's deep spirituality, in which the Eastern and the Western find a characteristic unity. Personal contemplation and meditation also determine the installation of a field of pine pollen in the second room; a work that has already been visible in large format at the Museum of Modern Art and in its fragility simultaneously pays homage to the simplicity of nature and symbolizes its transience.
Wolfgang Laib (* 1950 in Metzingen, Germany) was invited to documenta in 1982 and 1987, and his first institutional solo exhibition was held at the Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1986. Among his most significant exhibitions are presentations at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.. (2002); Dallas Museum of Art (2002); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2002); Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2005); and MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2010). In 2013, a permanent room was installed for the first time at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., followed by another one in 2014 at La Ribaute, Barjac.
With the kind support of
