Karla Kaplun
Basel Social Club
June 15th - 21st, 2025
From canonical theology to New Age mysticism, angels occupy both the sacred and profane realms. Karla Kaplun draws on this duality, weaving together sources as disparate as the Adoration of the Magi to the cosmology of Menocchio—a 16th-century Friulian miller who claimed that the universe began in a primordial chaos from which cheese emerged, inhabited by worms that transformed into angels. He was burned at the stake in 1599.
In the triptych, the Magi —Melchior, Gaspar, and Balthazar —appear disguised as harlequins, animating the surrounding figures and disrupting the stillness typical of a nativity scene. A Christ-like figure recurs across all three panels, lying inert on a table, his body pulled by one of the Magi. Another tugs at a cradle, part pigsty, part manger, while the mother feeds the infant from a galloping horse. The third Wise Man emerges from a wedge of cheese in the foreground, offered perhaps as a gift for the newborn or as a relic from the Last Supper. Though the cheese occupies only a corner of the composition, it acts as the generative locus of the scene, its subtle presence acting as both an instigator and a foil to the surrounding figures.
Alongside the triptych are two isolated depictions of Menochio’s cheese. Their distinct forms suggest not just material specificity, but the possibility of transformation. Inspired by Menocchio’s vision, where worms born from cheese evolve into higher beings, the cheeses become sites of origin, where the oneiric logic of the story begins to take shape. From these humble forms emerge the Magi, not as fixed religious icons, but as mutable figures shaped by fermentation, decay, and imagination.
“I have said that, in my opinion, all was chaos, that is, earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together; and out of that bulk a mass formed – just as cheese is made out of milk – and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels. The most holy majesty de- creed that these should be God and the angels, and among that number of angels there was also God, he too having been created out of that mass at the same time, and he was named lord with four captains, Lucifer, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. That Lucifer sought to make himself lord equal to the king, who was the majesty of God, and for this arrogance God ordered him driven out of heaven with all his host and his company; and this God later created Adam and Eve and people in great number to take the places of the angels who had been expelled. And as this multitude did not follow God’s commandments, he sent his Son and he was crucified.” - Menocchio
Karla Kaplun (b. 1993, Querétaro) lives and works in Mexico City. Selected solo exhibitions have been held at: Francis Irv, New York (forthcoming 2026, 2024) House of Gaga, Guadelajara, Los Angeles, Mexico City (2025, 2022, 2020); High Art, Paris (2023). Selected group exhibitions have been held at: House of Gaga, Mexico City (2024, 2022); Lodos, Mexico City (2021, 2020).
Karla Kaplun
Natanael at Belen
2025
Oil on linen
35.5 x 102 inches
90 x 259 cm
Natanael at Belen
2025
Oil on linen
35.5 x 102 inches
90 x 259 cm
Karla Kaplun
Cheese is angels home I
2025
Oil on linen
23.5 x 15.75 inches 60 x 40 cm
Karla Kaplun
Cheese is angels home II
2025
Oil on linen
23.5 x 15.75 inches 60 x 40 cm
Karla Kaplun
Lost flowers made bouquet
2025
Oil on linen
23.5 x 15.75 inches 60 x 40 cm
