“I have absolutely no need to talk about how I paint or how my paintings come about. I’m much more interested in why someone paints and the feelings they experience when they’re doing it.”
Klodin Erb
Jury statement
“Klodin Erb is a painter through and through. She is a great storyteller, layering motifs interspersed with pure painterliness to capture precarious moments in the existence of the creaturely in individual images, series and video works. She is driven by a curiosity about motifs and a painterly energy that, over the years, have led her to develop an unmistakeable signature style. Refusing to rest on her laurels, she tirelessly pushes painting further and further out of its comfort zone, fearlessly confronting risks along the way. The jury was won over by her uncompromising artistry.”
Klodin Erb, *1963 in Winterthur, lives in Zurich
In her expressive and fantastical pictorial worlds, Klodin Erb reacts like a seismograph to the social and media moods and situations of the present day. Her core medium — the basis of her work — is painting. Often, the theme dictates the form: she tailors her techniques to the topic she is dealing with, underlining, emphasising, accentuating and interweaving form and content to maximise the expressive power of painting. The content of her pictures is always located in the present moment. Formal influences come from popular and web culture and from art history, together with a love of experimentation and a continual probing of the limits of painting.
A precise observer of her surroundings, and of the world in which we live, Klodin Erb is interested in how our social structures are changing, and the challenges we face in the here and now. Just as people — and thus our society — evolve, so she constantly interrogates and renews her work as an artist, driving it constantly forwards. Forays into other media, such as film, installation and collage, prove to be extremely inspiring and fruitful ways of generating new kinds of image, which she then incorporates into her painting.
Klodin Erb studied fine art at the School of Art and Design Zurich (now the Zurich University of the Arts). Her works have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions at venues including the Helen Dahm Museum, Oetwil am See, 2022 (S), Museum Langmatt, Baden, 2022 (G), Centre culturel suisse, Paris, 2022 (G), Museum im Bellpark, Kriens, 2020 (G), Kunstmuseum Winterthur, 2019 (G), Kunstmuseum Solothurn, 2019 (G), Kunsthaus Pasquart, Biel, 2018 (S), Museum der Brotkultur, Ulm, 2018 (G), Kunstmuseum Luzern, 2017 (G), Kunstmuseum Bern, 2017 (G), Villa Bernasconi, Geneva, 2017 (G), Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, 2014 (G), Kunstmuseum Olten, 2013 (G), Haus für Kunst Uri, Altdorf, 2011 (G), Kunst(Zeug)Haus, Rapperswil, 2010 (G), and Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen, 2008 (S).
Works by Klodin Erb are held in the collections of various museums including the Kunstmuseum Bern, Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen, Bündner Kunstmuseum, Chur and Kunsthaus Pasquart, Biel as well as major public and private collections. Klodin Erb has been a lecturer in the Art and Design Department of the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts since 2018.
