With natural materials uncommon to art, such as beeswax, milk, pollen and rice, Wolfgang Laib produces work that has an almost sacred aura. His oeuvre is cyclical in character: each type of work is made over and again, but the circle of works continues to expand.
Despite their fragility, the works of Laib possess a timeless and enduring quality. They allude to the beauty and preciousness of things that are simply there and, at the same time, to primary, unexcessive necessities of life. The rectangles of pure pollen, which he makes by sifting this onto the floor, seem to be a sheer celebration of the inconceivable intensity of the color. Simple tin bowls with small heaps of rice grain, placed in a row on the floor, suggest that the little which is needed for subsistence is abundantly present.