Trash or treasure? Sculptor or photographer? Installation or display? A myriad of questions arises when observing the works of Marius Glauer, born in Oslo, Norway, now living in Berlin, Germany. His artistic creations blur the lines between high and low, abstract and concrete, organic and digital, serious and ironic, sexy and obscene. In terms of material and discourse, Glauer covers the full range of anything and everything that can be considered photography. His particular point of interest is the threshold between digital photography and sculpture. Since graduating from UdK (Berlin University of the Arts) as a master student of Josephine Pryde’s, Glauer prefers uncommon materials in his works: Fabric with bizarre patterns, everyday objects such as bags, flowers, office supplies, wrapping material, changeable substances like ink or whipped cream, and a variety of lenticular foil. These foils are mostly known from postcards where the subjects change based on the beholder’s perspective. Thus every new perspective on Glauer’s photographs creates a different image.
Oftentimes, preceding works and biographical events produce the materiality and theme of his performative arrangements. The standalone pictures of his group of works produced in series are digitally fixed prototypes – photographic still lifes of his assembled materials in a state of flow. The majority exists only as a limited number of digital C-prints. According to Adorno, true intention is only possible as one relinquishes intention. Along these lines, Glauer’s camera looks intimately at its objects while uncovering them at the same time: Sparkling surfaces and reflecting foils change into monumental facades manipulating scale, details of fabric and light refraction are magnified to hyper real highlights. Glauer examines the visual relevance of his ephemeral ensembles and questions their translation into photographic two-dimensionality. Mercedes-Benz Art Collection purchased his Untitled II, 2015, a piece from a group of works containing only three subjects. In it, the artist experimented with merely a three-colored foil garland, a pipe of transparent acrylic glass, and black ink.
The photographs of Marius Glauer are never finished or fixed. Rather, they are in search of something new to be absorbed and in return left behind as its own creation. They intend to broaden the possibilities of photography and question medial limits. Thus, Glauer creates images of the future or even “photographic science fiction” (Simon Elson).
“Rock’n’Roll every night, underneath the neon light.”
