MASI hosts a retrospective dedicated to Wolfgang Laib, a German artist whose work in the contemporary artistic scene stands out for its essentialness, clarity, and depth of thought. Conceived in collaboration with the artist himself, it comprises 50 works, including sculptures, photographs, drawings, and installations that explore all the areas of his creative universe.

The drawings and photographs that open the show immediately outline Laib’s unique artistic language, merging with harmony and simplicity, a deep knowledge of culture and Eastern religions, and an equally close reflection on the roots of Western cultural heritage.

Laib’s photographs taken during his trips to Europe and Asia comprise a repertoire of forms that draw new life in his essential pastel drawings. In turn, the motifs that fill his works on paper are echoed and magnified in the sculptures and installations on display, according to a principle of circularity and repetition that is characteristic of the artist’s work.

On the generous level -2 space, works representing Laib’s entire artistic trajectory converse without barriers, from his essential Milkstone, which beautifully balances the hardness of marble and the fluidity of milk, a leitmotif since the artist’s early shows, to his more recent wooden structures covered with reflecting Burmese lacquer (Untitled, 2003); from the famous sequence of Rice Meals (1983) to the imposing ziggurat (Es gibt keine Anfang und kein Ende, 1999) made of wood and beeswax, that impresses the viewer by its sheer size and intense fragrance. At the heart of the exhibition, the large and luminous field of pine pollen, a presence as ephemeral as it is grandiose, inevitably invites us to contemplate the cycles of nature and life.

Laib’s distinctive treatment of the organic and inorganic materials in his works is significant: he sculpts marble, shapes beeswax, and arranges pollen in orderly compositions without presuming to attach new value to the materials. Rather, he seeks to act as a go-between who, through his work, makes the intrinsic beauty of every material visible to the viewer.