Wolfgang Laib

The Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery presents German artist Wolfgang Laib's exhibition Passageway-Overgoing as part of the 2005 UWA Perth International Arts Festival.

Wolfgang Laib's art is meditation on nature and connection, and on the possibility of a truly liberating disengagement from the everyday world. He creates fields of light, immaterial and unresolvable, with golden yellow pollen, beeswax ships that float through the air and pools of milk and marble which glow with an inner light.

Wolfgang Laib draws in his art on both a German tradition, which considers humankind's place in the natural world, and on other, parallel traditions in India and Asia. His work is austere, highly refined and compelling.

The pollen Laib collects every summer distils the light and growth of the natural world. In opening up his jars of pollen and laying it out in a gallery Laib opens up the possibility of his viewers connecting to a still, quiet and much larger world.

Wolfgang Laib is widely known and respected as a major international artist. He has been exhibiting internationally for twenty-five years, in Europe, North America and Asia, and the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery is delighted to present the first major exhibition of his work in Australia.

Part of this exhibition, Laib's Ziggurat (1999), is unable to be shown at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery due to height constraints at the Gallery. Ziggurat can, however, be seen at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, in the Perth Festival exhibition Seeking Transcendence.

The Passageway-Overgoing exhibition has been organised by the German Institut fur Auslandsbeziehungen, and in Australia is being facilitated by the Goethe Institut. Following its display at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery it will travel to the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne and the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney.

Wolfgang Laib is coming from Germany for the opening of the exhibition at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery. He will speak about his work at the Gallery at 5.00 pm on Tuesday 15 February 2005.

Pressetext

Wolfgang Laib: Passageway-Overgoing