German artist Olaf Holzapfel uses a range of materials, media and scales to explore themes relating to the self and decision-making.

As an artist who grew up in the GDR before the reunification, do you feel as if people still tag you with that particular label?

OLAF HOLZAPFEL: Yes, it’s a strange thing. No-one would ever say that Georg Baselitz or Joseph Beuys – who grew up during the Nazi era – are former Nazi artists. But my bios, especially in Germany, always point out that ‘he grew up in the GDR’. For a while I thought it was typical chauvinism. They keep you out; you’re not part of their system and thus not a competitor. But it’s more than that. I think there’s still an inner conflict in German society.

But your background is perhaps interesting in the context of working with themes that involve borders and thresholds. Is there a relationship there?

I was a refugee in 1989. I jumped over the border in Hungary – it was a biographical moment. I grew up in a state that was very safe and, in a way, very stable. There was one clear enemy: the government. But ordinary people were very disconnected in their opposition; it was like a silent protest. A big break came in ’89, but soon afterwards – in around 1991 – the new media revolution began. That was important for me and my work, and I think it was important in general. The starting point for perestroika was when Gorbachev realized there were fewer computers in the whole of Russia than there were PCs in California.

You initially studied architecture, didn’t you?

I studied thermodynamics for a year. I wanted to be a physicist, but then I felt the need for a change and a closer relationship with materials, so I studied architecture. When I realized that what I do is more theoretical and more independent of use, I switched again. It was a long process, with obvious biographical reasons. In a limited society like the GDR, the function of an artist is limited as well. I needed time to develop my capabilities.

Your Perspex works seem to draw viewers into the very individual threshold of self and surroundings.

I began the acrylic pieces after a long stay in India, where I studied at the National Institute of Design with Singanapali Balaram. Much building in India is unplanned growth in and around villages. When areas get denser, the farmers don’t leave; they just park their livestock on the streets and people deal with it. They have a different attitude to ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. Being ‘in between’ can mean that if you’re not part of something, you don’t exist.

I understand ‘in between’ to mean neither here nor there. Is it possible to be both here and there?

They have different, multilayered interpretations. The Western model is about bringing the inside and the outside into a dialectical system to create a balance. But an Indian person might say that when the inside is in harmony, the outside is in chaos anyway.

Can you elaborate?

Indians are okay with chaos. It’s a part of life, as is polytheism, a belief I associate with the virtual world and the internet. The idea of decentralization was popular at the end of the 1990s, with talk of the global village and so on. Now everything is extremely centralized, and there’s absolute control. The idea back then was that everyone could participate, could do their own thing and create many centres. I saw similarities with India’s ‘multilayers’, which still exist to a certain extent but always cause stress in Western-thinking people, whereas coping well with chaos has more to do with your internal attitude – with what you radiate from the inside out.

How does it relate to your Perspex sculptures?

A central part of sculpture is the artist’s portrayal of tension. The object you make is charged with a tension that comes from within. I don’t mean an abstract surface tension, but a tension of the whole form that goes from inside to outside. My thinking was: when we are pushed out of shape, we become something like a bubble, or a fold. We can let our spaces unfold in different ways. That explains my approach to these forms. Other obvious aspects are that they have been made by hand and that they are affected by gravity.

Let’s go back to the impression that your work involves borders and thresholds on a variety of scales. If a two-dimensional object is a plane or a barrier and a three-dimensional object is a spatial form, the result is a kind of interaction. Do you agree?

I see it in a more fluid sense. I want to set the object in motion. Two- and three-dimensionality are just conventions, a fact we’ve forgotten. There is a legendary argument in art – and probably in architecture as well – about whether a painting is an object, a relief or a surface. It’s important to decide for yourself what it is, and the same applies to barriers.

Two- and three-dimensionality are just conventions, a fact we’ve forgotten

You’re saying it comes back to personal perception, whether you see a flat plane or a space?

It’s more about understanding that works of art are unfinished – that the viewer is part of them: the one who can and must decide. Such decisions occur throughout my work.

Is your work more about self-reflection or a reflection of the surrounding space?

Both. It’s about in-between-ness. We could philosophize now about bubbles. I could talk about how we are always both inside and outside. But what interests me even more is that within this regarding, this reflection, is a sort of corridor. The thing I observe between possible decisions becomes my corridor. To be in and to define the interspace I’m describing is a quality, not an error. To use architecture as a metaphor: we are going to build a house now, but if you don’t participate, it will decay. You being inside makes you part of the house and the house part of you, but it also creates an interspace between you and your house. The connection is there, but you don’t yet know what you might have to do and what the results will be. The situation is dynamic. So much architecture today behaves as if it is final, but is still gets torn down after 30 years. We know it’s not built for eternity, but we no longer participate in the dynamic element; we have the authorities or another external party to do it for us.

Participation – when making a building or a sculpture – is central to my work, perhaps the most important part of it. Participation allows you to determine, and it means that it’s not necessary to make things that are final or complete.

Reflections are not just about exploring the self but about self-validation as well.

I think the whole thing about tattoos, selfies and the like has to do with the increasing distance between us and the physical world. People are compelled to do something with or to their bodies in order to ascertain that they actually have a body. The whole fitness thing is a kind of self-affirmation.

Most people do less and less physical work yet consciously do more and more for their bodies. It’s not really about health, but about showing and sensing the self. I’m more interested in a different kind of physical reflection.

This interview was originally featured in our book One Artist, One Material: Fifty-five makers on their medium. Get your copy here.