Werner Glinka

Biography

Werner Glinka, resides in Woodside, California. He was raised in the industrial city of Gelsenkirchen, Germany, where he developed an aesthetic sensibility shaped by the stark, industrial environment.
He came to California in 1981. After he moved to the Santa Cruz Mountains, he developed his unique style of assemblage combining the influences of the sleek, steel-and-glass modernism of the Bauhaus movement with the simple, functional grace of Japanese landscapes.

Statement

I started to create my assemblages after I moved to Kings Mountain. Kings Mountain is located between Half Moon Bay and Woodside in the northern part of the Santa Cruz mountain range. These mountains are a natural buffer zone between buzzing Silicon Valley and the quite, majestic expanse of the Pacific Ocean.
The Peninsula landscape is a powerful stimulant, but it is not just nature alone, it is the human leaving marks in nature that has always fascinated me. It is what I find that inspires me.
Many of my assemblages use found objects. The assemblage is the stage upon which I transform the ordinary into an object of attention – the ordinary object transcends the commonplace. The juxtaposition of color, geometry, ordinary objects and surface textures creates tension.
My inspiration comes from a fallen leaf, a rusty rebar  a crack in the asphalt of a parking lot might trigger an initial mental image. I further develop these ideas through rough sketches.
I do not assign meaning to my pieces, as their significance is relative to the viewer. The absence of a title forces the observer to engage the work itself. There is no bias only what the observer brings to it.
With my work I hope I can show the observer a different view of nature.