VIENNA.- In his first major solo show in Austria the Berlin-based artist Klaus Weber is introducing work from the last few years, including works specially conceived for the exhibition, in which he lends the main space of the Secession the character of a living organism. Light, sound and smell play a supporting role and sensually interweave the various objects with the space. Exemplary for this is the new work SONNENORGEL, which serves as the "central organ". For this, Klaus Weber has had a heliostat installed and a number of glass panels replaced on the roof of the Secession to send unfiltered sunlight into the space and, directed by a pile of mirrors, to light the other artworks like spots. In this way he not only invisibly brings the outdoors into the space but also deconstructs the white cube of the Secession and lays the architectural structure open.

Klaus Weber conceives works across various media and spatial units which are frequently based on complex technological interconnections and intricately organised production processes. However, by deliberately manipulating everyday structures, the tracing of deviations and the exploration of the impossible they undermine the metaphorical and actual power of a functionalist rationality.

In doing this Klaus Weber repeatedly resorts to images of nature, and explores the sustainable potential of the not-tobe- tamed in a thoroughly humorous, anarchic manner. This characterises the fungi, the pavement mushrooms, that are capable of breaking through an asphalt surface(UNFOLDING CUL-DE-SAC) as much as the fountain filled with homeopathic LSD (PUBLIC FOUNTAIN LSD HALL). Klaus Weber addresses our social imagination through the combination of cultivated, political and public forces with uncontrollably and wildly expanding rhizome-like phenomena. What is generally considered to have rebellious or dubious connotations, i.e. an autonomy that eludes permanent control by the state and society, appears constructive. As a result, the artist subversively reinterprets the loss of control which is negatively perceived in the informed Western world with its marked inclination towards repression.

This is the background before which the strategic moment inscribed in the work of Klaus Weber by the integration of the sensual, the atmospheric, the absurd and the organic is revealed. The aim is to expand awareness and, as instruments for escape, as catalysts and filters to add dynamic to the work's setting, to temporarily lift the dominant cultural and social consensus.