Angela Glajcar is a German artist known for her spectacular installations and sculptures made of suspended reams of carefully torn paper. Flat or curved, ripped, shredded or intact—creating delicate tunnels or caves—the glowing sheets are meticulously positioned collectively for cumulative impact.
Read MoreRaised in Mainz, Angela Glajcar studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg (1991–1998). Initially, with figurative tutors like Reginald Kramer or the non-figurative university teacher Tim Scott, Glajcar worked with heavy materials such as forged or welded steel and dense wood, but was dissatisfied with the reliance on studio assistants and the academic, masculinist mindset. She began to explore a radically new concept of spatial extension with much lighter, more fragile, more malleable materials.
In 2005 she began playing with light, shadow, and hollow spaces to delve into rationality as well as spontaneous emotion, working with torn paper to make portable wall reliefs like Corum #019 (2013) and Corum #023 (2015). Later, she would make larger, more spatially spectacular, suspended installations, like My Silence is my Self Defence (2021) and Terforation Infinity 2019-043 (2019). She began to horizontally extend the internal enclosures, and explore juxtaposed successions of ragged, textured, containing edges. These dramatic sculptures allude to underground cavernous landscapes, tunnels to be discovered from one end of suspended pristine 'blocks'.
Sometimes, Glajcar avoids systems of suspension from ceilings or walls, and makes smaller freestanding works involving torn paper and glue, such as Scale Matters 2020-017 (2020). On other occasions, she has used cascading glass fabric, glass mesh, or translucent plastic, as in Glass Paper (2014) and The Light Within (2011).
Of her projects, Glajcar says: 'My objects embrace the void, it is an interplay of space, material and void. This creates lightness, and, of course, emptiness offers space. This is also an offer to the viewer, look and perceive the light, the space and the emptiness – and fill them with your thoughts.'
Glajcar is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Paper Art Award, Haus des Papiers, Berlin (2021); the Mainzer Stadtdrucker Award (2014–2015); the Public Choice Award, Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen (2010); the Phönix Art Award (2006); the Emy Roeder Award (2005); and the Vordemberge Gildewart Award (2004).
Angela Glajcar has participated in many solo and group exhibitions.
Solo exhibitions include Papier fâché, Stream Art Gallery, Brussels (2021); We are talking about the space between us, Galerie Martin Kudlek, Cologne (2020); My Silence is My Self-Defence, K.OSS Contemporary Art, Detroit (2020); Terforation, Bluerider ART, Taipei (2020).
Group exhibitions include Lunar Sonata: Hanji Works and Contemporary Art, Jeonbuk Museum of Art, South Korea (2021); Papier im Raum: Spatial Paper, Haus des Papiers, Berlin (2021); Paper Routes: Women to Watch 2020, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. (2020); One If By Land, Powerlong Museum, Shanghai (2019).
Angela Glajcar's website can be found here , and her Instagram here.
John Hurrell | Ocula | 2022
