Over a period of more than forty years, Wolfgang Laib has created an oeuvre that largely escapes traditional categories and has an extraordinarily original quality. The rice house recalls, in its archaic form, reliquaries from the Far East. Wolfgang Laib thus takes up a traditional form but separates it from its common function in favour of a sculptural dimension.


Wolfgang Laib’s childhood travels with his family to Afghanistan, India, Iran, and Turkey instilled in him a lifelong interest in non-Western cultures. Before he became an artist, he studied medicine, but concluded that the field treated the body at the expense of the soul. To Laib, art is a form of transcendent spiritual healing and sustenance. Natural materials are important to the artist, who works with beeswax, milk, pollen, and rice, creating simple forms that strive to communicate at a universal level, transcending language.