Angela Glajcar

The German sculptor with Czech roots was born in Mainz in 1970. Her in-situ installations have already been shown and celebrated throughout Europe.

Angela Glajcar’s artistic career

The artist began her training at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg, where she studied sculpture under Tim Scott from 1991 to 1998. In 1996 she became his master student. Following her studies, she received various teaching assignments at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg, at the University of Applied Sciences in Mainz and at the universities of Gießen and Dortmund.

Coming from the tradition of compact wood and metal sculptures, she now works mainly in installations with industrially produced paper and technoid materials such as glass fabric and complex plastic materials.

Angela Glajcar’s paper sculptures, the unexplored territories

Glajcar’s sculptures and objects, often developed for a specific site, are determined by the incorporation of light. Angela Glajcar became known to a wider audience through her “Terforations”. These are objects made of paper webs that have been steeled one behind the other and in which spaces are created by tearing. For this, the artist tears paper webs, joins several elements together, or twists the paper.

Terforation derives on the one hand from perforation (from the Latin foramen = hole), i.e. the perforation of hollow bodies or flat objects. On the other hand, the term established by Glajcar is based on the Latin terra=earth. In this way, the artist alludes to the term terra incognita (unexplored land; -gurative: uncharted territory) to make it clear that her work is about exploring unexplored areas. For terra incognita outlines the vague knowledge, the presumption around knowledge that cannot be precisely defined at the moment.

One can never look all the way through the works, because the holes are situated one behind the other in such a way that the space leads into the unknown. In this way, the gaze is drawn to the structure, the space that is created by the layers of paper with recesses behind each other. The recesses become caves of magical pull, with the slight movement and colour change of the white paper in shadow areas causing constant change and new visibility of the works. Glacjar’s work brings the paper into a harmony between lightness and steadfastness.

Through her work with paper, Glacjar gives new meaning to the material. Once invented in China, paper has evolved over the last 2,000 years from a luxury good to a disposable item that continues to lose its cultural and communicative carrier meaning. Thus, Glacjar brings the multifunctional product back to a place that affords it protection.