WOLFGANG LAIB
2013-04-01The exhibition will include color photographs and projected images depicting Vedic fire rituals, and Pulimalai, a mountain in southern India, where the artist is planning the creation of a monumentally-scaled Brahmanda, an egg-shaped form symbolizing the wholeness of the universe in Indian philosophy, culture, and religion. A group of new drawings related to the photographs will also be on view.
The fire rituals, performed by Brahman priests from Tamil Nadu in southern India, took place in February of 2009 in India and in June of 2009, in connection with an exhibition of works by Wolfgang Laib, at the Fondazione Merz in Turin, Italy, an exhibition space primarily dedicated to the preservation of works by the Italian artist Mario Merz (1925–2003), with whom Laib enjoyed a close personal friendship.
In keeping with his desire that the exhibition at the Merz Foundation not be “…limited to one individual, neither to one place, neither to a certain time,” Laib arranged for it to be inaugurated in February through the enactment of fire rituals on the mountain Melavalavu, north of Madurai, near his studio in India. It concluded in June when he invited 45 Brahman priests to travel to Turin to conduct a week–long series of rituals called a mahayagna in the foundation’s courtyard. Continuing a tradition that dates back thousands of years, ghee (clarified butter), spices, and food were burned in the spirit of sacrifice, to honor and purify the environment with smoke and aromatic fumes.
For the titles of both this exhibition and the one at the Merz Foundation, Laib chose a quotation from one of the Upanishads, the ancient philosophical texts that form the basis of the Hindu Religion.
Exhibition runs through till May 4th, 2013
Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects
535 West 22nd Street
Sixth Floor
New York
N.Y
10011
