Rice Checks

Critics have plenty of labels for Wolfgang Laib: shaman, ascetic, mystic. He would be the Jedi master of modern minimalist sculpture, if the Germans went in for glibness. Let’s just call him a very patient man, one with a singular vision. How patient? His new installation at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Without Place—Without Time—Without Body, consists of hundreds of mounds of rice in a matrix around five piles of pollen — all laid out by hand, grain and particle by grain and particle. How visionary is that? The museum quotes Laib describing his work as “concerned with the search for an entrance or passage to another world.” The trick is to see the symbolism in rice and the power in details. When you’re ready to meet Laib halfway on the path to transcendence, go to the Nelson-Atkins (4525 Oak, 816-751-1278). The exhibit is open in the museum’s Bloch Building and stays up through January 17. See nelson-atkins.org for details.

Saturdays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sundays, 12-5 p.m.; Wednesdays, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; Thursdays, 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Starts: Sept. 26. Continues through Jan. 17, 2009