Wolfgang Laib

Wolfgang Laib

Philippe Buttner, Harald Szeemann, Katharina Schmidt • Hatje Cantz

This edition of Wolfgang Laib

ISBN-10: 3775791159 · ISBN-13: 978‑3775791151 · 2003

Canonical book record

Completeness 52

Cover quality: good

2manybooks editorial

Wolfgang Laib coined a phrase on the occasion of the opening of one of his exhibitions in France that can be taken as a description for his oeuvre: "L'éphémere, c'est l'éternité." (The ephemeral is eternal.) The present volume of photographs he took on his travels is Laib's attempt to somehow grasp this fleeting and almost intangible essence. Silent photographs that often pre- empt ideas then manifest in sculptures or installations he creates many years later. Aspects that particularly fascinate Wolfgang Laib in this context are the non-European notions of spirituality, one example being how religion is embedded in everyday life, as in India, not to mention the way that, for all their historical nature, various ancient monuments, temples or tombs still exert a force in the present, engendering numerous associations. His photographs thus often show us people who live in a timeless relationship with these stone archetypes. Laib's almost meditative pictures capture the "aura" as it were of such everyday vistas and allow us to glimpse the deeper eternal meaning, "l'éternité", in them. A temple tower comes to represent the middle of the world, the mountain that symbolizes the entire world; a heap of straw before it alludes to Laib's pollen mountains - a "sun" that again references very fundamental issues.

Book metadata

Contributors

Community tags

Inferred themes

Machine-inferred from catalog text. Not verified subjects.

Community signals

Have: 11 · Like: 8 · Rating: 3.2 / 5 (10)