"Curtain falls dog barks"

Editor Simone Liedtke

Follow Simone

The Aargauer Kunsthaus is showing Klodin Erb's largest solo exhibition: Her paintings, textile works, installations and videos are full of intense creative power.

Klodin Erb's exhibition begins with a curtain that falls and rises again every 20 minutes, a mirror, mirror, mirror on the wall and a boudoir-like dressing table made of fabric that - inspired by Alice in Wonderland - tricks the eye. The three early works by Klodin Erb mark three entrances through which one enters the enchanting world of the artist.

It quickly becomes clear that there is a lot of physicality in Klodin Erb's art. And desire. A fusion of bodies, of life and death. In the series "Forces and Juices" - painted on transparent Japanese paper and lit from behind - magical root creatures move playfully between plant and human, dancing, striding, arguing and intimately intertwined.

And then there is the lemon. A constantly recurring motif. It conceives and gives birth, is animal, human, genital and celestial body all at the same time. It plays the main character in the film "The Sweet Lemon Ballad" as a human-sized lemon in a crocheted costume, played by the artist herself.

Or it functions as a disruptive factor in the place of contemplation, created for the large-format ink works of the "Transformation" series, which are understood as a poetic process with glazed surfaces that flow calmly and permeably into one another. In between: small, garish images of the lemon. Sometimes it is bloody, sometimes peeled, it is in Meret Oppenheim's fur cup or in the teeth of a skull.

Klodin Erb's art is moving. It delves into the collective unconscious, triggers memories and emotions and dismantles our own self-image. Nothing is as it seems, everything is transient, only metamorphosis and constant change are real. An insight that the artist celebrates with a great deal of humour and irony in a magical show.

Klodin Erb (*1963), Orlando #175, 2019Oil on canvas, 60 x 50 cmWith permission of the artist and Galerie Urs Meile© Klodin ErbPhoto: Stefan Altenburger Fotografie Zürich

Klodin Erb (*1963), Venus in fur, 2016Oil on canvas, 20 x 30 cmPrivate collection, Zurich© Klodin ErbPhoto: Stefan Altenburger Fotografie Zurich

The forest of death is a mixture of glitter disco and artificial plants, pimped up with colourful outfits on a mirror lake, guarded by four deities - the "Glossy Idols" - in smartphone aesthetics. The artificial world is juxtaposed with the large painting "After the Landscape II", which powerfully and abstractly depicts nature and landscape and is somewhat reminiscent of romantic painting.

The work "Babel & Bubbles", which explores language and its use, is also playful. Symbols and emojis form messages on canvases in the form of speech bubbles and look like contemporary hieroglyphics: although they have been assigned universal meanings, no one understands them clearly. In addition, the light installation "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" (A little night music) fills the room with sound and causes various floor lamps to flicker to the rhythm of the song "Mr Sandman". The bedroom as a place of digital communication and misunderstandings.

A black dog kennel in the courtyard provides a surprise. The work is called "Cerberus", named after the hellhound from Greek mythology. As you approach the hut, you hear yapping barks, but no dog is visible. The inside of the hut resembles a blood-red wound or a gaping maw with its tongue hanging out. The hell of Cerberus seems to have devoured him.

The monumental "Orlando" series of paintings can be described as the centrepiece of the exhibition. It originally comprised 200 small-format portraits in various sizes, half of which are on display in the exhibition. The paintings are placed irregularly and without any recognisable order. They show JFK, Hitler, the Pope, Uriella, Amy Winehouse, characters from films, animals, mythical creatures, fantasy figures, machines - and at the very top Klodin Erb with a Viking helmet and a broad smile. The faces and objects seem to run through a wide variety of styles: from cubist fragments to allusions to the portraits of Dutch Renaissance painter Jan van Eyck and Picasso. It is a cross-section of times, classes and cultures, without beginning and without end. All in all and all in one.

21.9.2025-4.1.2026
Klodin Erb at the Aargauer Kunsthaus "Curtain falls dog barks"