Swiss artist Klodin Erb is making waves in the art world with her largest institutional solo exhibition to date, titled "Curtain Falls, Dog Barks," currently on display at the Aargau Art Museum. The exhibition showcases three decades of work from an artist who has consistently defied conventional art trends and created a unique artistic universe that blends light and dark, profound and playful, criticism and humor.
The exhibition begins dramatically with a curtain that falls as sharply as a guillotine, creating a startling sound that catches visitors off guard. Meanwhile, a dog barks from outside in the museum's inner courtyard, where a red dog house stands empty. The work, titled "Cerberus," features an interior that resembles a tongue or vulva, immediately establishing the surreal atmosphere that permeates the entire show.
Born in 1963 in Winterthur and raised in Schaffhausen, Erb later moved to Zurich where she studied painting at the University of Art and Design (now ZHdK) from 1989 to 1993. However, she turned her back on classical painting shortly after graduation, destroying all her paintings and beginning to experiment with object-based textile works. These early pieces appear remarkably contemporary today, defying their 1990s origins.
Erb has always been ahead of her time, consistently following her artistic instincts rather than art world trends. Over thirty years, she has created a dense and multifaceted body of work that has not gone unnoticed. In 2022, she was honored with the Prix Meret Oppenheim, an important award for Swiss artists.
The exhibition is designed as a dramaturgical total work of art rather than following a chronological narrative. Everything is given equal weight, with the focus on emotional impact. Erb's work "The Curtain" exemplifies her core interest in the deconstruction of art, asking fundamental questions about what constitutes a painting. While viewers witness the destruction of an artwork, they simultaneously see its renewal as the blue velvet curtain reveals a salmon-pink silk layer underneath, radiating optimism.
Visitors can explore Erb's universe through three different entrances, choosing their own path through twelve rooms and the museum's courtyard. One route tells of fertility, sexuality, and the creative power of ideas. Another offers a darker entry point dealing with spiritual themes like death and transience. The third path explores birth and personality development, making visitors protagonists in this cinematic setting.
One of the most intriguing aspects of the exhibition is Erb's self-identification as a lemon. This is no joke – the artist genuinely loves lemons and identifies with the bright yellow fruit. Her video "The Sweet Lemon Ballad" features her dressed as a lemon walking through various landscapes and settings. She has also created a self-portrait as a lemon, reminiscent of Caspar David Friedrich's famous "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog."
Even in a recreation of Meret Oppenheim's legendary fur-covered cup, Erb places a lemon. These citations and references reflect her contradictory desire to inscribe herself in the tradition of Western art history, particularly painting, while simultaneously transcending it.
Erb particularly enjoys questioning conventions, especially regarding gender and identity. Her exploration of these themes began with Virginia Woolf's novel "Orlando," whose protagonist lives for over 500 years and changes gender during this time journey. Between 2013 and 2021, Erb created around 200 portraits of people – including friends and known personalities from pop culture and politics – animals, fantasy creatures, and objects. This seemingly infinite variation is reflected in her painting style, with figures ranging from classically painted to freely captured in gestural brushstrokes.
The exhibition's heart lies in the Orlando series, displayed against a light blue background reminiscent of flowing water, where all these figures seem to merge together. This dense painterly space celebrates the diversity of our forms of existence, representing Erb's vision of a collective portrait of all living beings.
Erb demonstrates her mastery of grand gestures without ever becoming pathetic. Her ability to connect popular culture with mythology and politics is evident in three large-format new paintings in the series "Planetarium," which could be described as walkable star maps. Inspired by medieval maps from her family archive, the artist combines invented astrological symbols with existing ones, playfully referencing the growing popularity of astrological predictions.
These canvases are partially perforated and supported by wooden structures, resembling stage sets. Erb creates a "Theatrum Mundi," a world theater that transcends geographical boundaries. Three of the six monumental works are being shown almost simultaneously in an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Le Locle, allowing the artist to overcome not only cosmic boundaries but also earthly ones like Switzerland's cultural divide between German and French-speaking regions.
The exhibition presents Erb's art as a space of radical freedom where the world can be read and shaped anew. Her paintings are not merely beautiful but serve as commentaries on current social realities, from digitization and gender issues to human-nature relationships. Through her hierarchyless connections between humans, animals, plants, fantasy beings, constellations, objects, and architectural elements, she reveals our living space as a great network where everything is interconnected.
The "Curtain Falls, Dog Barks" exhibition runs until January 4, 2026, at the Aargau Art Museum in Aarau. The companion exhibition "Toutes le savent, même les anges" will be displayed at the Museum of Fine Arts in Le Locle from October 11, 2025, to March 1, 2026.
