Wolfgang Laib at Sean Kelly

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Wolfgang Laib's recent exhibition included rice, ghee and photos of religious sites in India. While Laib is known for his laborious practices (such as collecting pollen for his installations) and his attention to the evocative sensory aspects of favored materials (the smell and touch of beeswax, in addition to its look), this exhibition focused on Indian references as well.

The art world's increased multiculturalism of the last several decades brings up questions of what can be read formally in art and what must be known, and whether art can be a "universal" or even multinational language. Interpretations based only on viewers' contexts seem arrogant, yet absent catalogues, wall labels or advance research, viewers must rely on formal qualities. Fortunately, Laib's visual effects and consistent sensual interests carry across the cultural divide.

The exhibition included an installation, six small stone sculptures and one tall construction of lacquered wood, in addition to four gelatin silver prints and a drawing. The drawing, in pencil and oil pastel, renders a row of three small, rounded triangles--isolated on a 2-foot-tall sheet of paper--loosely occupied by what look like grains of rice, colored yellow. The less-than-sharp 14-by-11-inch photos might be enlarged snapshots taken in low light. They date from 1984, '98 and 2006; each shows a holy site or object, such as a flower-garlanded Ganesha figure or Shaivite saints (according to the title) with cloth wrappings. The photos accompanied a perhaps unrelated sculpture: a set of stairs with very tall risers and very narrow treads, only 3 or 4 inches deep. These dark, glossy steps rose almost to the ceiling, inviting yet impossible to ascend.

The second gallery offered long solid objects on the floor, some with house-shape end profiles and others with arched tops. Rice was scattered around them. All titled Rice House and dated 2007, they are around 6 inches tall, 15 inches to 4 feet long, and echo works of the same title Laib has previously made in metal. These were colored either black with a patchy sheen or matte redorange. The checklist itemized: black or red Indian granite, black smoke, sunflower oil and red ghee (clarified butter).

Last was the installation, Without Place--Without Time--Without Body. It's a vast expanse of what the checklist calls "rice mountains," toward the center of which are five of intensely yellow hazelnut pollen. Using the word "mountain" for conical piles a few inches high--arranged in a gently imperfect grid almost from wall to wall in the largest gallery--insists on metaphor. The field evoked the devotional labor of laying it out.

Among the works shown here are edibles, oils, spices--sustenance. There are both brilliant and neutral colors and an enormous range of literal and implied dimensions. The photos signal symbolic objects. What all this might mean in India is unknown to me, but Laib so intensely points to the sensory that I half expected an inducement to smell and taste. And he so firmly points to the spiritual that Western sculptural traditions dissolved into mysticism, which may be precisely his intent.

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