The Chemistry of Concepts and Sense
We have come to accept photography as a part of reality. The image belongs to what is real. We effortlessly differentiate between photo and world or can discern a relation of similarity. “We,” by the way, means “us humans.” Everyone, everywhere. This “total we” was not always there – a notion field researchers witnessed well into the 1960s at least. They traveled to Africa and other areas where there was little familiarity with the customs of Western civilization. There, they showed photographs to locals who had never seen such things before. The anthropologist Melville Herskovits, for example, relates the story of an African woman who is handed a black-and-white picture of her son. She rotated the white-grey-black paper around trying to figure out its meaning, but had great difficulties discerning a visual representation of her son. Only after having the different elements of the picture explained to her did she slowly warm to the subject.
Her difficulty in recognizing the main point of the image, namely her son, was probably partly due to the fact that people who are not familiar with photography get hung up on visually prominent minor points: The pointy edges of the photo paper, the strikingly bright white edge; irrelevant to the subject though it may be, it framed every photo back then. Actually, one could consider these negligible factors as object-like, quasi sculptural aspects of photography, which in turn would lead straight to the work of Marius Glauer. However, the concrete block of photographic-visual culture that began enclosing the post-WWII world stands in the way of that, despite the fact that from that time on visual perception and images have been progressively more deeply researched. For instance, guided by the clearly corroborated hypothesis that the mechanical process of seeing is the same for all humans, but the “what” and “how” of visual cognition is strongly shaped by culture, Herskovits, alongside a psychologist and a social scientist, co-authored the groundbreaking study The Influence of Culture on Visual Perception (1966), which also contains the anecdote about the mother and her son. Roughly since that time, it has been firmly established that the world is only partly seen as it really is. The other part is a mixture of experience and cultural knowledge. Thus, one sees what one knows. And those who are constantly confronted with photos might end up seeing only photogenicity…
Of course, it would be easy to criticize the colonialist aspects of the anthropological research just mentioned, but that would be beside the point here. What matters is rather that the study testifies to the fact that there once was an outside – a place external to photo culture. That place has vanished today. Without a doubt there are no longer any major areas of the world where photos are not recognized – in both the moral and the epistemic sense of the word. Conversely, the photographic medium solidifies and ossifies culture worldwide, paralyzes tactile life, blocks people’s view in the form of cellphone cameras, turns the eyes into one-way streets. And we are only readers and critics. Things get worse for those who aspire to use the camera for something aesthetically authentic. They have all run at least once into that visual block, bounced off of it, and must somehow surmount it, dig underneath it, change course of direction, drill pathways through it.
Because there are more photos than reality, because human multitudes keep flocking towards the Leaning Tower of Pisa, not to take it in, but to take a picture of themselves with it, the artist Marius Glauer has brought out an element of the visual-photographic which has become all but imperceptible. That is, the sculpting of images – the literal sense of the German Bildhauerei (sculpture), which means the striking or chopping of images. One could say that Glauer builds his own Tower of Pisa; he fashions things that don’t exist and then takes photos of them. He becomes a sculptor, a builder of images, with the means of photography – as witnessed at his exhibition at fructa space in Munich, 2019. Even an old vacation picture from Madagascar is sculpturally reshaped by blowing it up to gigantic proportions, printing it onto semitransparent mesh foil, and slamming it onto the facade of the exhibition space. “Slamming” rather than “hanging” is the proper expression here, since the three young, almost child-like men with naked upper bodies glare onto the street in a rather kitschy fashion. This picture is called Three Horses (English original). The curator wrote the following about it: “Billboard-sized, Glauer stands next to two friends on a beach in Madagascar … naïve boundlessness, hopes, dreams, faith and doubt. Everything is prefigured here, but nothing is put into words.”[KA1]
The three figures in the photograph look wet behind the ears. Curious. What place is yet to be discovered? Where can the earthly paradise be found? Everyone knows these questions, everyone can empathize. However, the reminiscence on youthfulness is only one possible effect emanating from this work. The photo itself – in its dimensions and its location – is above all a symbol of aesthetic self-assertion. The place yet to be discovered? It’s here, in the art! This joy is promised by the exhibition’s title, Joie de Vivre.
The curator’s expression, “billboard-like,” points in the right direction; a billboard is more than an image, it’s an installation. Glauer churns out such material-aesthetic enormities every now and then, but above all he crafts and harvests little – often pop-style – assemblages out of a wide variety of gathered materials such as foils, ink, nail polish, paint, jewelry and fashion accessories, which he subsequently captures with his large format camera, sometimes digitally, sometimes analogue.
A crucial work for this way of proceeding is Blue Garland (2013), in which the material used – a party garland – is still somewhat recognizable, however, in its new constellation it seems to have become a building block for a strange new world. Glauer creates new spatialities, new objects for his photos, often of a sculptural character, such as Untitled II (2015). It remains unclear what the objects represent: Are they science fiction traffic signs, reliefs of future palaces, sculptural models for a human “chemistry of concepts and sensations” (to use an expression coined by Friedrich Nietzsche)? In any case, one is irresistibly triggered to ask the artist: What is this? And even more: Where is this now? His answer would be something along the lines of: “It does not exist any longer, I threw it away.” After all, he only needs these objects or sculptures in order to build a space for his photography.
More recently, Glauer has been partly using natural materials such as flowers. This is already intimated in Pink Foil (2017) and the images of Dreams and Memories (2019); in Radical Rose (2020) this becomes the determining principle. These natural objects are arranged in a similar fashion as the artificial ones. The rose of Radical Rose lies on a mirror, becomes an image of itself; moreover, it is already dried out and almost has the aura of something uncanny, something unreal.
“We are now in transition from an object-oriented to a system-oriented culture. Here change emanates, not from things, but from the way things are done.” These perceptive words were formulated in 1968 by the art historian Jack Burnham in his essay System Aesthetics. They somehow fit Glauer’s art; he not only creates the photographed objects himself, but also employs photography in spatial installations, as in the case of the Three Horses billboard or Dreams and Memories (2019). The latter was the central installation of the Joie-de-vivre exhibition. The work consists of an orchid flower that has been zoomed-in on and subsequently printed onto a PVC tarpaulin and a photo sculpture erected on an acrylic stand in front of it. The flower tarpaulin falls in loose folds that form a gentle wave towards the photograph Joie de Vivre. In turn, nail polish in which the studio lights are reflected, runs down a bright red lacquered metal sheet…
So, what is it? Is it a symbol of blood or the joy of life? An abstract ornament? Or simply running nail polish? It is all that and more, together, in parallel, and simultaneously. Glauer’s aesthetic is free and original enough not to have to decide. Nonetheless, it stands with both feet in its time, in the social world. There is not only today’s powerful visual culture whose erosive machinery needs to be countered. The oeuvre of Wolfgang Tillmans also plays a role. When Glauer studied with Sonja Müller and Josephine Pryde in Berlin in the 2000s, Tillmans, who in 2000 was the first photographer to be awarded the Turner Prize, gained recognition in all genres. Glauer’s invention of new spatialities and modes of presentation, which characterize his photography, and the abstract nature of his work, are partly a reaction to Tillmans’ work, in which these aspects play a subordinate role at best.
Glauer’s installed objects lend a new space to the photos. This produces a tremendous levity, since, as opposed to the photographed-to-death world of the Tower of Pisa, in his pictures there is nothing to be recognized, but much to be seen. By removing them from their context of trivializing everyday (mis)use, and the direct and obvious reference to reality, they manage to restore a magical effect to the photographic image. The observer is coaxed into forming dreams and memories he may not be able to fully grasp yet. They are shown places that nobody has ever seen. One might imagine what would happen if a future anthropologist showed Glauer’s photo sculpture Dreams and Memories to a being from Venus and asked: “What is this?” If that being is familiar with the historical-earthly customs, it might respond: “Of course, that’s art.” But what might it say if it was not familiar with them?
Simon Elson