True "Glassics"

According to Wolfgang Glass, artist, Venus resides in Disneyland and she sports a sensous body as well as sensous rabbit ears, welcoming the wind of change. Another work, his larger-than-life Artemis, a digital print, depicts the Greek hunting goddess tracking down brave new world´s pixel technology. His futuristic landscapes, exploding with colors and shapes, evoke dreams of space adventures rather than memories of a nostalgic past - surely they are not of this world. The continuum of time and space will be disrupted and transformed when you enter this new universe of art.

Glass takes the accessories, clichés and myths of our own realities to create strange and fantastic scenarios. Several of his paintings rely on the texture of clearly structured fantasy novels or comics. The eternal struggle of good and bad, love and hate, life and death, however, is displayed and presented tongue in cheek, supplemented by his own sardonic comments, in a technique of collage and montage. Strong heroines wearing high heels march forward to save a world mutilated by male violence ... and sometimes they will stumble and loose their own footing.

The influence of pop art and his love of comics constitute an unmistakable background for the serial elements in his work. "Comics", says Wolfgang Glass, "do not wobble or waver elaborately, they are perfectly precise. Talented cartoonists need no more than a single image to describe a complex scene, whereas writers would need several pages. Their drawings transform spirit and mind into physical action. They always will look for new ideas to transfer them into new materials."

Some time ago, the world of comics began to present women successfully gaining more and more ground for themselves. In the world of Wolfgang Glass they have aleady won the battle of emancipation and made their stand. Female figures and forms dominate his paintings, graphics and drawings. "For me, they are symbols of beauty and sensuality, openness and development, flexibility and stubbornness. And they are signs of hope for a liberated and peaceful planet."
The tension between his own expectations and experiences and the reality that surrounds him ("What I love and create is like a diary") is released in paintings full of spontaneous energy and power.

"Broad brushes"
Glass uses most versatile materials, colors, forms and sizes, frequently including architectural elements. During the last years he began to focus more and more on paintings/ canvasses rather than specializing in graphic art. "I use broader brushes now. And my blue phase has changed into a spectrum of bright and radiant colors dominated by shades of yellow, orange and red." He has kept, however, the technique of mixed media and also makes wide use of the means of computer technology to create new and original images. Quite often, his abstract paintings - reminding of the art of Informel - will turn out, on second sight, to really be artful compositions which tell complex stories. Raven (acryl on canvas), for example, displays red and orange color explosions contrasted by floating shadows, like protecting - or menacing? - wings spreading over an imaginary landscape of the mind.

Drawing - like drawing a sword ...
In their suppleness, intense motion, strength and power, the images of Wolfgang Glass evoke the strokes of a sword drawn by a samurai. Small wonder: Glass who has been practicing the martial arts of Japanese Aikido for more than fifteen years, strongly believes in the power of self control, self discipline and a self-determined, grateful life. "My aim is not to break any taboos in art - as there are none in my perception of the world. I think into the future, visualizing new science & research, new political, economic, social and cultural developments and structures on this planet. I contemplate utopias and how human beings can grow to reach new shores. There are, however, very few people who gain wisdom from their knowledge."

For Glass, the act of painting, the act of creating new images means also an act of new perception - without calculating, without considering marketing chances. Nevertheless, the artist born in Neustadt/Weinstraße (Southwest Germany) in 1957, can look back to more than hundred single exhibitions in Germany and abroad during the last two decades. Numerous of his art works have been purchased by public or private collectors, companies and institutions. He has developed his own, genuine style - paintings radiating sensuality as well as sensitivity: true Glassics.

Usch Kiausch, M.A., Neustadt an der Weinstraße, summer 20042004