Klodin Erb: The Sweet Lemon Ballad

Rotwand showcases a new exhibition by the artist Koldin Erb, who is presenting his newly film entitled “The Sweet Lemon Ballad”, for which Stefan Zweifel has written an essay.

” There it lies, beautifully at one with itself in a still life. The lemon could be satisfied and comfortable within its frame, enjoying and admiring itself as an image. Bathed by the swinging strokes of the brush and a foam of colors.But the lemon gently shudders. It does not want to be a mere image, not just a representation but a presence unto itself. It wants to be utterly itself, a rounded-out “I”: a lemon.But just as human consciousness must go through various stages of development in Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Spirit, in order to arrive at itself, so too must the lemon pass through different phases. But whereas human consciousness thereby becomes an independent subject through this process, by consuming objects, overcoming its counterparts by feeding on them, only the opposite path is open to the lemon. Mouthless, it must allow itself to be eaten, squeezed dry. The course of things takes a different path in its case.”

Translation by Laura Schleussner.