Bee a pollinating artist

Bee a pollinating artist

By: Ylena Zamora-Vargas

Who says doctors can’t be artists? Wolfgang Laib, a German former doctor who left medicine to find spiritual healing through art, resorted to the wonders of nature to pollinate a floored “canvas”. His largest exhibition to date, “Pollen from Hazelnut”, injects a vivid luminosity into the second floor of the MoMA. Thinking outside the confines of the synthetic, Laib creatively sifts pollen on the floor to engender the illusion of paint, stating “pollen is the potential beginning of the life of the plant. It is as simple, as beautiful, and as complex as this. And of course it has so many meanings. I think everybody who lives knows that pollen is important.”

Laib’s biological allusion is striking and provoking. How many of us actually think about pollen or the importance of it in plant reproduction or its implications for the beautification of our planet? Laib’s stark homage to life is reinforced by the morbid, ash gray backdrop that catapults the vibrant yellow of the pollen. As Mackenzie Bartlett, a mother of two who brought her kids to see the exhibit commented, “what most impressed me is the size, the pieces of pollen are so small and yet together they make a huge impact. It’s hard to see them individually and not see their bold powerful teamwork.” Perhaps underlying such composition, Laib is trying to suggest something about how society best operates. 

Despite Laib’s magnanimous exhibit occupying the “Museum’s inner sanctum” as he calls it, some were not as impressed. Steven from NJ said “I don’t see how they call this art. You can see this in an open field in spring in the Berkshires.” Nonetheless, his wife Susan proceeded to tell me how initially she thought the exhibit was a projection coming from the ceiling and how when she approached and read about Laib’s work she was captured. She said “I love the way the light reflects off the pollen and how a square is so rigid but this has some movement and soft edges. Goes to show that nobody can be rigid in life; there’s always some loose ends”. To this, Steven retorted with a seeming change of heart, “well, my wife likes it so I like it too.” The lively couple have been married for forty years and their disagreement over the artwork reveals the constructive discrepancy that Laib’s art evokes.

Another observer, Thomas, a photographer from San Francisco, added, “it’s a wonderful piece to appropriate and make new art of. You can make a new landscape out of the image. It interacts with you.” Upon hearing this, I couldn’t resist but do just that, appropriate Laib’s work, cut it in half, and make a modern Rothko. Indeed, a succession of appropriation as Laib appropriated the pollen, I appropriated Thomas’ idea and Laib’s work and referenced Rothko –ahh the versatility of inspiring art. Truly, Wolfgang Laib’s work from above struck me as inside sunshine and left me with an overall nostalgia for romanticizing nature, an impulse very absent in this concrete jungle.

"The Sun Slicing the Winter" - My appropriation of Laib's art by creating a sort of modern Rothko