INTERVIEW WITH MARIUS GLAUER

The Norwegian-German artist Marius Glauer (b. 1983, Oslo, Norway) lives and works in Berlin. He studied at the Universität der Künste Berlin (Berlin University of the Arts) and the Parsons School of Art and Design, New York. We visit him in the large format photo lab at the Universität der Künste Berlin, where he currently holds a teaching position. His appearance matches the inventory: black walls, black clothes. We sit diagonally at the large photo table, where prints are usually unrolled, and together look at his book GLAUER, published by Hatje Cantz in 2021. Marius Glauer's practice has evolved, but the monograph GLAUER is a fundamental work that provides insight into the beginnings and development of his artistic practice.
In his first institutional solo exhibition Wait a Minute at the Francisco Carolinum in Linz, he displays works that vary greatly in format and are sometimes installative, moving at the interface of image and sculpture. He works photographically, but sees himself more as a painter or sculptor.

HC: Marius, GLAUER describes a radical break at the beginning of your first years of study, which ultimately laid the foundation for the new direction that defines your artistic work today, moving away from classical photography. Do you sometimes wonder what would have happened if you had taken a different path?

MG: For me, the image had exhausted itself at that point. But maybe I was a bit impatient then. Many images already exist too often. I was looking for a new effect and innovation. Anyway, that's when my work with these materials slowly began. From then on, it became clear that I work more like a painter, or like a sculptor, not like a classical photographer who seeks the image, the moments with people. As soon as people are in the picture, everything revolves around them. I felt more comfortable with the materials – but it was a rocky road, because it initially had to do with surfaces. This automatically makes it quite harsh the moment people are out of the picture.

Untitled II, 2015 © Marius Glauer

HC: And the objects, do they find you or do you find them?

MG:. Material is needed, and getting it isn't always so easy – whether it's bought, found, or has to be detached from something. That's actually the most brutal part. Sometimes it's very simple: nail polish on a metallic background. That's enough. And sometimes there might be a lot of other material that is only necessary to let this image emerge from itself, to let it come into being. It somehow requires an accumulation, like a Big Bang actually. So much has to accumulate and build up until individual parts emerge.

HC: What makes a material art-worthy for you?

MG: Theoretically, any material can now enter my assemblages. But some repel me or don't appeal to me. I always consider how something looks in translation in the image, and especially in large scale. Ultimately, it comes down to balance. Metallic objects, for example, are very rewarding and play with a high and low, trash and treasure. Just flowers, that wouldn't be it either. It's about contradictions and ambiguities.

HC: Your pictures have the character of a climax, which we, however, observe from the moment after. Almost like a fresh melancholy that it is now over. A cruel feeling, but one that also carries a lust for life.

MG: Indeed, these sculptural constructions, the assemblages, are designed to fill up and display themselves in full entirety and beauty, which inevitably must be followed by the second phase: collapse. This also happens in the individual series that produce various images. There might be a withered bouquet, or an image is simply titled Love me – that's perhaps a despair emanating from an image, and it also carries the question of whether one can even photograph or create the new image. I don't want to hide the despair; I'd rather let it run its course and see how it takes on a life of its own and what kind of images it creates. That's also a joy in collapsing, failing. Perhaps that's also something evolutionary, when something can't work.

HC: Do the materials, some of which come from mass production, contain a critique of capitalism, an environmental consciousness, or a reflection of our hedonism?

MG: I think these are materials that indicate that we are increasingly losing our breath. That's what's available, these are the things that surround us, for better or worse. They push their way into the artworks. Like garlands, they are incredibly diverse: they experience all the moods of a party, but then they get stuck, the mood drops, they become trash. The enlargement also transforms the whole thing.

Joie de Vivre 1, 2019 © Marius Glauer

HC: So you enlarge many motifs, consciously choosing the image section. What happens if you don't find anything? What does nothingness or emptiness mean to you amidst all the opulence in the materials?

MG: My camera remains passive. I decide based on the materials. I think in a kind of protectively enclosed space where individual materials are central. That's quite clear. And yet these are compositions in a small space, which I keep getting closer to, until eventually exhaustion follows and in the end I only photograph the traces of the setting. So it often starts out organized but it's really about everything changing. Through me, through itself. Because it changes, unexpected constellations suddenly appear. And within this image section, I then already envision them in a larger size. I don't think about the things they are in reality, their actual size. I think them directly further, also for the space.

HC: So you also work individually for exhibition spaces and translate the works specifically for the space in which you show them?

MG: Yes, that has become a habit. Without seeing the space, no initial vision arises – What goes in here? A certain gesture should emerge in the space, which ideally encompasses the zeitgeist and also my own themes. The flying tubes, for example, came from a desire for innovation: I showed them standing, on a pedestal, but now they are supposed to fly. So there's also this push: Now you have to do something different! And we'll look at it.

Exhibition view Eigen+Art Lab, 2025 © Marius Glauer

HC: Let's stick with the tubes. What role does the form of the material, the cylindrical shape, play here?

MG: All prints come out of the printer rolled outwards. Every smooth image is preceded by this cylindrical shape. The tubes have something column-like, architectural, and have freed me from just making pictures. The picture has made the leap into sculpture. That was totally healing for me.

HC: So you start with the assemblage in three-dimensional space, translate it into a two-dimensional image, and this in turn into a sculpture in space.

MG: The tubes are already trying to push their way into the pictures. But I haven't allowed that yet. I try not to let it become too self-referential, I always try to expand further, but at the same time to allow something to reappear.

HC: Your works can therefore be read more spatially, not clearly narratively. What does time mean for your work?

MG: I have an image in my mind of always being at the forefront of time. But that's a dilemma: we are always at the forefront of time until we stop perceiving it. That's how my own narratives feel to me, and through that I also feel that they never remain the same – until you die, and then look back. I want to imagine splitting this continuous timeline, dividing it into a spectrum, so as not to have this feeling of a dilemma, to counteract the passage of time. Of course, I am aware that it will end eventually. But photographically, that's great! Photography captures time, reveals ambivalences. It shows the concrete as well as the abstract. The images actually arise as interruptions of the assemblage process, which rears up and then falls apart again.

HC: Is that a longing for a pause?

MG: It's more the urge to experience the full spectrum, to exhaust all ideas and artistic creation – but that's also a dilemma again, because that's not even possible. The beautiful is a beautiful attempt that fails, or a failure that can be beautiful. You think you've figured out how something works and then you realize again: no, you don't. That's also where my anti-attitude towards conceptual art comes from. The titles of the works are similar: they should not interrupt the associative potential. Some people need anchor points, I don't. I want the work to be able to run free.