Running through the presentation of Clausen's works is the underlying theme of cleanliness – cleanliness in the sense of keeping things clean, security, safety, keeping out the dirt.
There are four different groups of exhibits:
Enlargements of German computer magazine covers displayed in aluminium frames. These covers are of the the loudest possible design, with headlines in bright bold letters declaiming 'Sicher surfen 2007!', 'Die geheimen Nero Tools' 'Daten retten' 'Vista geknackt' ('Safe Surfing in 2007', 'Secret Nero Tools', 'Saving Data', 'Cracking Vista'), thus pandering to the fears of the everyday computer user. Taking the form of single or double frame panels, these enlarged magazine covers exude a constant mood of alarm and emergency.
Shrink-wrapped standard aluminium frames with posters of high-end sports cars pasted to the outside of the wrapping. The tedium of everyday PC virus infection is countered with the ultimate extreme in computer-aided car design.
Plinths constructed from standard D.I.Y. shelving boards covered with heavy-duty transparent builder's tarpaulin and supporting objects manifesting varying degrees of ready-madeness. Each component of these sculptures is 'art-less' to a high degree, though the choice of their collision, or might one say collusion, is of specific significance. The objects all relate to the idea of protection and keeping things warm and/or clean. A plastic car cover, a camper's sleeping pad, a sculpture fabricated from a roll of tin foil and screw clamps, a plaster sculpture with a polystyrene element cast from a vacuum formed packaging container and an edge protector, a fine natural sponge.
Factory-made paintings of two kinds of 'Tuscan style' still-lifes presented in their shrink-wrapping and protective cardboard corners. These paintings, which are in fact ink jet prints on canvas, are not unlike what one would expect to find in an Italian restaurant.
Nature makes its appearance only in the shape of the Tuscan still-lifes and perhaps the sponge, too. Otherwise it is a man-made – or, to be more precise, an industrially produced – world that prevails. Nevertheless, the human being is omnipresent, for he/she made all this, and the sculptures and pictures all clearly denote human desires and fears.
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