Wolfgang Laib

Wolfgang Laib

Wolfgang Laib • Hatje Cantz

This edition of Wolfgang Laib

ISBN-10: 3775790233 · ISBN-13: 978‑3775790239 · 2000

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Completeness 48

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Wolfgang Laib´s installations in Belvedere Castle, carefully documented in this book, afford us access to one of the most privileged and poetical places of classical Weimar. Laib transports this places into the present, lending it both a sculptural and an imagery dimension: the four wax ships, laid out on a simple support on the ground floor, look as though they have merely been put aside for some later voyage whose destination is as yet uncertain. The view from the windows overlooking the park shows us the place whence such a voyage would start; the place where we still are. The five unclimbable mountains, piled up in the historical Magic Table Pavilion on the roof of Belvedere Castle, are of the kind that are there for voyages of the mind, voyages of the imagination. Our gaze moves past them towards the climbable slopes of the Ettersberg and then far out into the Thuringian countryside. Whilst the tower of Buchenwald is visible in the distance, the artist evokes the beauty and human scale of art, for residing in the concentrated energy of contemplation in Wolfgang Laib's room of unclimbable mountains is also that awareness of annihilation and horror which many an observer considers to be so irreconcilable with the sheer beauty of art.

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