From the Known to the Unknown

Artwork: Wolfgang Laib, From the Known to the Unknown, Barjac, France

Anselm Kiefer has opened his incredible studio complex in Barjac in southern France, featuring indoor and outdoor installations, to the public as well as inviting artists to create work. In 2014 Wolfgang Laib was commissioned to create a permanent installation at La Ribaute, From the Known to the Unknown—To Where is Your Oracle Leading You. It is a 40-meter-long wax corridor lit only by bare lightbulbs, encouraging the viewer to experience a meditative state through the warm, golden lighting and smell of beeswax.

The installation took four years to complete, and Laib wrote this letter regarding the project:

“In this endless underground labyrinth of corridors, spaces, cryptes, tunnels with incredible artworks—
You suddenly come down the stairs into a chamber with beeswax—40m long, simply lit with some bulbs.
I normally never refer to historical themes, but as Anselm mostly does—this wax chamber with its shape refers to the corridor in Cumae near Naples in Italy—
The oracle of Sibyl of Cumae

From the known to the unknown
And from the unknown to the known…..

What an incredible work together of two artists—
What a pity that this is so rare in our contemporary art world.
Anselm can do what I cannot do—
And I can do what he cannot do.
And together it becomes so much more.
The two worlds give so much to each other.
And then we will continue this with Anselm’s painting ‘la clarté qui tombe des étoiles’
In the forest near my studio in southern Germany”

(Laib, 2021)