Cycles of nature pollinate long-distance show

In Wolfgang Laib's Auckland show the large, translucent field of pollen dust sprinkled across the floor is made from enough pine pollen to fill four jars.

Artist Wolfgang Laib leads a mostly private life, working from a 300-year-old farmhouse and its neighbouring 19th-century barn near the remote village of Hochdorf in southern Germany, where he has lived for most of his life.

"No other artist would stay where he grew up but I think, for me, I want to be totally alone when I do my work. I want to be totally independent and I want to have as little influence as possible from the outside," he says over the phone with a gentle voice.

It is winter in Germany and Laib has spent the past few weeks making drawings, and printing black-and-white photographs. From early spring in February, until June, he collects pollen from around the village for his installations.

His solitary routines are implicit in his art, but he also considers it important to share the results.

"From the beginning, it would have been very sad if I would do this work only for myself here, so I am here half the year and half the year I am somewhere else in the world doing my exhibitions. And somehow I always find a very beautiful balance of being here totally alone, doing my work, but then also making my exhibitions in the biggest cities in the world."

The cycles of nature are an important aspect of his work, and he says the contemplation of these simple renewals, embodied in the dedication of his routines, can provide new perspectives on life.

"If you see what life is, there is more like a cycle and that is something very beautiful and [it always] makes something completely different."

Laib says he fields requests to produce a pollen installation nearly every week but he has to be selective due to the labour-intensive gathering and the amount of materials that nature provides him with.

In his Auckland show, at the New Gallery, the large, translucent field of pollen dust sprinkled across the floor is made from enough pine pollen to fill four jars, the equivalent of three months of harvesting over several years. Normally he can gather one and a half jars in a year, but a bad year could yield half of that.

Given Laib's ecological sensitivity and organic methods, it is surprising he is happy to exhibit his work in the austere environment of a white-walled contemporary gallery, but he says he enjoys the contrast.

"Somehow, the more abstract the surrounding is, the more intense the experience can be. And I am very spoilt that I had somehow the possibility to show my work in the best spaces in the world.

"People always think that I would hate concrete but that is not true at all. There is this very famous museum in Bregenz [Austria], built by [Peter] Zumthor, which is only concrete - concrete walls and concrete floors and I had one of my most beautiful exhibitions there.

"The whole building became like a Gesamtkunstwerk, which means like an art work altogether with the building, which was very beautiful because this concrete has a very neutral background. And with the pollen and the beeswax in there, it was fantastic. And also, the architect said, 'For me, this was one of the most beautiful exhibitions I could have ever imagined in my architecture'."

Although Laib trained to be a doctor, he does not feel he changed careers when he started making art.

"I do as an artist what I wanted to do as a doctor. I think this is very important. I started out to study medicine with all the ideals of what you can have to be a doctor but then I got very disappointed and I think I am doing with my artworks what I wanted to do as a doctor."

Much of his inspiration comes from non-Western cultures, especially Indian, where the distinction between the rituals of art, medicine and religion are less clear.

"The more I saw what medicine is, the more I was interested in other things and searched very much. I began to study Sanskrit during my medical studies and searched for many other things, and somehow it was like a real reaction to my dissatisfaction.

"I think non-European cultures, and also cultures from different times, if you take them very seriously and not only as a historical situation or historical statement, then if you take them for your life today; they can be a very big challenge. They can somehow rearrange all your thoughts and you think totally differently."

Laib's work is also reminiscent of the idealism of early modernist art, which may seem out-dated in today's cynical society, but this does not deter his conviction.

"I don't find this [idealism] corny at all," he says. "The cornier it looks now, the more we need them. I also realise, when I have, like, an exhibition in Japan, some people in their daily life are so far away from it. But inside, especially in Japan, for instance, people have still an incredible richness which they cannot think of in their daily life. But when they are confronted with a pollen piece, they are nearly into tears and this is something very beautiful."* Wolfgang Laib, German installation artist at the New Gallery, Lorne St, to March 5