Klaus Weber: Secession (English and German Edition)

Klaus Weber; Andr

ISBN 10: 193312864X / ISBN 13: 9781933128641

Published by Sternberg Press, 2009

About this Item

Text free of underlining, writing and highlighting. Very nice clean copy. PREFACE Andras Palffy, President of the Secession For his first large-scale solo exhibition in Austria, Klaus Weber transforms the Secession's main exhibition hall, often cited as the original White Cube, into a synaesthetic and dynamic organism whose architecture is shaped by "living walls" formed by hanging plants, openings in the ceiling's skylights, the subtle extension of a wall, and not least importantly by a deployment of daylight dependent on the whims of the weather. Within this scenario, Klaus Weber organises his sculptures and installations as though they were theatrical props on a stage. Social questions of a philosophical, psychological, or economic nature are generally the points of departure for Weber's artistic work; methodologically, it is always in close contact with conceptual art. The realisations usually bear the marks of subtle irony or anarchic energy. One guiding idea in the conception of this show was transformation; loss of control was another. Time and again, Klaus Weber draws on images of an overwhelming and unruly nature, images that express a sharp contrast with the impetus of (Western) societies toward regulation and control. He recognises a constructive potential in this uncontrollable aspect of nature, something that is usually seen as problematic or destructive. His Sonnenorgel [Sun Organ], a work developed specifically for this exhibition and the "central organ" of its mise-en-scene, illustrates this antagonism, including some of its contradictory aspects. The artist had a heliostatic mirror installed on the Secession's roof that collects the sunlight and projects a concentrated ray into the exhibition space. There, the light strikes an octagonal mirror object that scatters reflexes across the room, illuminating the exhibits as though with a spotlight or merely streaking them and thus establishing an immaterial connection between them. But the entire mechanism works only on clear days, when there is enough sunlight?on gray autumn days, these highlights will be absent: an element of chance the artist has deliberately chosen to accept, making it a part of the very concept of his show. We would like to thank all those who have lent their support to this exhibition project and the catalogue: first and foremost Klaus Weber for the confidence he has shown in us and for the excellent collaboration. We thank Alex Farquharson 88 pages.

Seller Inventory # WB045523

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Klaus Weber: Secession (English and German Edition)
• Publisher: Sternberg Press
• Publication Date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 193312864X
• ISBN 13: 9781933128641
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: VG
• Dimensions: 10.2W x 7.9H x 0.3D inches 10.2 inches width by 7.9 inches height by 0.3 inches depth
• Weight: 15 ounces
• Seller catalogs:
  • ART::Collections, Catalogs, Exhibitions

About this title

Synopsis

For anyone not used to today's postmedium condition, Klaus Weber's constructions could be mistaken for the experiments or inventions of a scientist or engineer. The main element of many of his works is a force or species belonging to the natural world, meteorological or biological: wind, sunbeams and rainfall, as well as plants and insects. Brought into combination with industrial materials of various kinds, Weber's assemblages look as if they should be more at home on the laboratory bench than the gallery floor. Here, the natural world is made to behave as it rarely does: heavy rainfall follows a moving car on a dry day; a small tornado issues forth from an ordinary vacuum cleaner; mushrooms emerge through tarmac; a plant hangs in the air without soil; a cactus is not a single plant, but two conjoined, with a pot at either end; a vast moth appears on the equities pages of a newspaper. Some of Weber's work recalls the mermen that taxidermists made from gibbons and fish that found their way into some Victorian natural history museums at a time when the veracity of the duckbilled platypus was doubted and Darwin's Origin of the Species was shaking the intellectual foundations of the West.

For his first large-scale solo exhibition at the Secession in Vienna, Klaus Weber installed Sonnenorgel [Sun Organ], a heliostatic mirror, on the institution's roof. The heliostat collects the sunlight and projects a concentrated ray into the exhibition space. There, the light strikes an octagonal mirror object that scatters reflexes across the room, illuminating the exhibits as though with a spotlight or merely streaking them and thus establishing an immaterial connection between them, interrelating them like actors sharing a script and stage. In this way each work receives fluctuating light waves that have travelled some 150,000,000 kilometres rather than the usual few metres from a gallery's lighting track. The display is illustrated in the book by use of a special insert.

This comprehensive catalogue documents for the first time the artist's oeuvre and reveals a recurring sense of limit-experiences: accidents, organism mutations, altered states, incursions from the outside. These apparent aberrations do not open up escapist or apocalyptic fantasies: instead, by intervening in the kinds of urban spaces that dominate our “advanced” cities, they undermine the sovereignty of order, and open up a space where alternative conceptions of social reality can be thought and acted upon.

Contributors
Alex Farquharson, Clemens Krümmel, Klaus Weber