Rise House, 1998

Having grown up in a cultured environment since he was a child, in contact with extra-European culture, Wolfgang Laib turned to art after a degree in medicine, obtained with a view to following in his father’s footsteps. The objectivity of science, however, was unable to satisfy his intimate need for spirituality, which led him to look for answers to his questions elsewhere, in Oriental philosophies and religions or in the figures of Christian mystics and saints. After frequent journeys to India together with his family, in 1972 he spent various months chiselling a great mass found near his home in order to transform it into a smooth ovoid shape, intense black in colour, which he would name Brahmanda: the cosmic egg in Sanskrit. [...]