Paper is a material steeped in historic cultural association. An age-old technology, in its artisanal, fine-art iteration, it is virtually unchanged in its method of production. Familiar to the scribes of ancient China and the Middle East, the ink masters of Japan and Korea and the watercolourists of the Enlightenment, it is a cheap, efficient and portable vehicle for an unmediated transmission of ideas. Glajcar’s deft manipulations place her in a subtle and intimate tradition.
These sculptures resonate with landscape: multiple laminations of ragged edges make rippling contour maps; shadowy hollows and fissures suggest cave and ravine; angular curls and projections model cliffs and rocky outcrops. The pieces are suffused with light, the translucence of the paper makes for a golden glow and wide range of modulating and quietly changing shadow. The pieces are not, however, mimetic or representational. There is no added colour or texture, no attempt at imitation. The references to landscape arise out the artist’s formal method, whose abstractions also allow for other, broader and more discursive, associations.
The works are often site-sensitive and produced in response to a place. Their aforementioned physicality is essential to their outcome: the artist using her body to measure, shape and mould the raw material. The various topographies of her works chart an interaction with their maker and in turn her response to the space around her. Angela Glajcar’s beautiful and ethereal sculptures spark serious contemplation of our relationship to the physical world and its vital materiality.
