This book documents the late James Lee Byars’ installation – the most radical encounter between autonomous art and religion at the Kunst-Station Sankt Peter, Cologne – mounted during Lent in 1995. Byars placed The White Mass at the very centre of the liturgical space, erecting his sculptures of interrogation around the core of religious life of the Jesuit congregation.

James Lee Byars was born in Detroit in 1932 and died in Cairo, 1997. He took part in movements of Western art, in happenings, performance art, Fluxus, minimal and concept art and joined beauty and modernity. He created a body of works and used himself as a work.