Wolfgang Laib: Without Time, Without Place, Without Body

Wolfgang Laib – one of the protagonists of contemporary research in art – converses with the great masters of the past, Filippo Brunelleschi, Leon Battista Alberti, Benozzo Gozzoli and Beato Angelico, giving life, within the historic center of Florence, to one of the most extended in recent years.

The monumental construction of Laib stands in the center of the chapel commissioned by the Pazzi family from Filippo Brunelleschi in 1429-30 next to the Basilica of Santa Croce: a large pyramid made up of steps that are not practicable but which suggest an imaginary ascension upwards. The Ziggurats are part of a series of works initiated by the artist in 1995 that draw on the simplicity and linearity of oriental religious architecture, such as temples and tombs. The artist revisits some architectural archetypes in a symbolic key, such as the staircase and the pyramid. The sculpture, entirely covered with precious beeswax, suggests a total symbiosis between a work of art and nature. As in installations with pollen, the link with the natural world is essential to the existence of the work, since the artist does not create from nothing but collects and organizes the natural elements in another form, rich in beneficial and soothing properties for the body. and the spirit. In his sculptures Laib reduces form to essentiality, this simplification process is the first step towards a total knowledge that passes through observation of what surrounds us and meditation, between visible and invisible. With this project, the Opera of Santa Croce, aware of its deeply rooted identity over time, has decided to start a new path of confrontation with contemporary languages ​​that allows its historical spaces to be experienced in the present, participating in the construction of its future.
The monumental complex of Santa Croce is a heritage of the Fondo Buildings of Worship – Ministry of the Interior and the Municipality of Florence.

For the first time in the history of the place, a contemporary artist crosses the threshold of the cells of the convent, the heart of the San Marco Museum, and enters into dialogue with the paintings by Beato Angelico painted between 1436 and 1446. Laib intervenes at the inside the cell with the fresco by Noli me Tangere and that of Cosimo the Elder frescoed with the Adoration of the Magi, entering the sacredness of the place with all the delicacy, evanescence and material fragility of his works. The pollen, sieved on the ground or grouped to form a mountain, has an intense yellow color that recalls the quintessence of spiritual purity, that of the light color that also characterizes the paintings of the Renaissance artist. The work of art is charged with a symbolic meaning that leads it to exist beyond spatial and temporal coordinates: Without Time, Without Place, Without Body, as the title of the exhibition suggests. Rarely does one witness such a profound encounter between an artist of today and that of yesterday. The language of the spirit and that of art merge and recognize each other as similar, overcoming any difference and distance between historical eras and religious worship. The Museum of San Marco on the 150th anniversary of its foundation has exceptionally agreed to exhibit, for three days, two works made in pollen inside the cell frescoed by Beato Angelico with the image of Noli me tangere and that universally known as the cell of Cosimo the Elder.

Inside the Magi Chapel, Laib exhibits a work made of pollen positioned inside the pouch above the altar. In line with his research and in dialogue with the installations housed within the Convent of San Marco, the work proposes a minimalist language resulting from a practice that proceeds by subtraction and simplification, but which is enriched with numerous symbolic references. “A small mountain of pollen appears surrounded by one of the most incredible works in the history of European art – which“, says Laib “is also a representation of Power on horseback – and potentially represents the origin of the plant world, the initiation to life“. In its density and concentration of meanings, the installation dialogues with a place dedicated to retreat, prayer and meditation, in which, however, the power and opulence of a lineage at the center of the history of Florence, of the Church, are exalted. of the whole world. Beyond the magnificence of the clothes and colors of the procession, the work seems to dialogue with the little son of Mary humbly lying on a flowery meadow, the true king of the world.

Inside the Rucellai Chapel – born in the second half of the fifteenth century inside the church of San Pancrazio (current seat of the Marino Marini Museum) which sees inside the chapel of the Holy Sepulcher, a jewel of Leon Battista Alberti’s architecture – Wolfgang Laib presents an unpublished work composed of a group of towers made of beeswax positioned on the marble altar. As in the Ziggurats, the artist uses simple geometric shapes, synthetic and essential, which with various heights refer to an ideal ascension upwards. The dialogue between the small sculptures and the architecture that houses them seems to be all played on an idea of ​​transcendence, of transition from an earthly condition to a more spiritual one. If the Renaissance sarcophagus repairs and isolates the body beyond life, Laib seems to have resorted to the use of beeswax, not only for the extreme ductility and intrinsic brightness of the material, but also for its soothing and protective properties, known all over the world. man since ancient times.

The project conceived by Wolfgang Laib for Florence involves spaces of extraordinary historical and artistic value in a dialogue that combines the art, architecture, history, economy and spirituality of the city. The artist thus confirms himself as a great artist of our time, capable of linking spirituality and art, anthropology and theology through centuries of history.