Dear _____,
When I asked Anne Fellner to write a review of Klodin Erb’s exhibition Vorhang fällt Hund bellt at the Aargauer Kunsthaus, she immediately agreed (“How exciting!”) but also mentioned that it would be her first time writing as an art critic. A painter herself, Fellner approached the show with both curiosity and trepidation, sending us a text that reads like a cross between a diary and a sharp-eyed interrogation of Erb’s work. I’m quite sure this won’t be Anne’s last cameo as a critic.
Best,
PROVENCE
On the 8th of October, 2025 I take a train from Zurich to Aarau to visit Klodin Erb’s exhibition Vorhang fällt Hund bellt at Aargauer Kunsthaus. As a fourth-generation Argovian painter (though I’ve never lived there myself) this endeavor feels dangerously close to a quest.
In its entirety the exhibition is a wild ride of emotions. There are moments of aversion, admiration, adoration, and even agony. Comedy runs throughout, never without critique. The title itself is a punchline—one that only fully lands once you go.
Tucked away in the south-east corner of the exhibition, obscured by a massive paravent depicting constellations of the night sky, the painting series Leda and the Swan (2024) shimmers in the half-light. The big question, of course, is: how did they actually do it? Zeus disguised as a swan, and Leda as Leda. Erb explores a range of positions on dime-store canvases of varying formats, as if testing what’s still possible within the myth’s tired erotic machinery.
There’s no shortage of lewd Leda and the Swan imagery in the history of art with Boucher’s version probably the most perverted—the swan gazing straight into the young Leda’s vagina (and we all know what a swan’s neck looks like). Immediately, the question of the artist arises: what does it mean to paint a scene of pornographic rape and then sell it, let alone buy it?
It might seem stale to rehash scenes from the canon, but if Matthieu Malouf can paint a Leda in 2024 and replace the swan with a penguin, then surely it’s all up for grabs. The question is whether that, too, isn’t passé. Then again, we wonder the same about painting itself.
What are swans anyway, with their long, twisty, sinewy necks and immaculate feathers? Perhaps the campest of birds—except, of course, for the oddball penguin in its tuxedo, who gets all the laughs. Erb’s choice of Prussian blue, titanium white, gold, silver, and glitter is camp in itself: a palette that both seduces and, dare I say, repulses. The best kind of painting, perhaps.
By nature, the swan is the perfect motif for painterly manifestation—an oily daub of creamy white or black extended by a signature capital letter S-shaped brushstroke, recalling inverted keyholes or question marks. Questions unanswered, eyes peering inward, iconic symbolism for a self-reflexive medium.
Silver and gold gleam in the dim light of the space. But why dim the lights at all? To create a sensual, sexy environment? There’s something comical about hiding the mythological scenes behind the paravent, lit from behind like an overgrown nightlight. It offers both shelter and illumination—all the better to lap up the inky scenes in semi-private, as they emerge and drip from their metallic backgrounds, satisfying our pervy imagination.
