Cheer up, yes you are weak and
yes, life is hard, yes, you are lowlives, sinners and nobodies, despised and
neglected and misunderstood. You boast and lie and cheat and make up stories in
your head distorting every experience. It’s like a journey through mud and
confusion with small glimpses of air. But ah, those glimpses, those wonderful
clean uncompromised breaths with no judgement, that hold all the love for those
despicable, wrong doing, faultfinding others and of your own wretched, filthy
self, that self that didn’t dare to enter the house, that didn’t dare to sit on
the chair, that didn’t dare to taste the porridge, that bitter porridge, that
too hot porridge, that sweet tasting porridge. Yes, you are lost, yes you are
drowning in coverups and excuses, your feet sink deep in the mud and you are
fighting and you are struggling. You drag those muddy shoes in the room, and
yes you are welcome, you always were, this is your home, your temple, this is
all for you. This is a celebration.
Addressed
to the deepest reaches of the human psyche, this statement greets visitors to A Journey Through Mud and Confusion with
Small Glimpses of Air, Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg’s exhibition at
Stockholm’s Moderna Museet. It’s an extraordinary spiel of inclusion and welcome
written in a colorful, almost folkloric language. Not only does it set the tone
for what is to come, but with it, Djurberg neatly strips off the veneer of
perfection that is typically overlaid on all facets of life, to reveal what she
is after: a messy, earthy truth.
As you
are digesting the passage, pulsing music beckons from the next room where the
video, One Need not be a House the Brain
Has Corridors (2018) is projected. Using stop motion animation, Djurberg
creates a dizzying journey into a galvanic netherworld that resembles nothing
so much as a dream. The video takes up an entire wall and so you are immersed
in the action. The camera angle is your point of view as you move through a long
hallway. Every now and then, a disembodied arm appears in the lower right,
opening a door, to imply the viewer’s (aka your) persona, imparting a “you are
there” immediacy. The setting is curious and evocative. Ornate wallpaper and
black and white checkerboard floor suggest a house of ill repute. They also add
visual busyness to the host of other data you must process, intensifying the
claustrophobia of the labyrinthine hallway. As you proceed, you are confronted,
sized up and leered at by a strange and rather sketchy cast of characters rendered
in modeling clay: gay S&M bikers, a man flashing stolen trinkets from the inside of his trench coat, a toothy crocodile and a prodigiously fanged, rhinestone-encrusted
poodle. They enter and exit through a series of doors, or just hang out in the
hallway forming an intimidating gauntlet to pass by. Enigmatic handwritten phrases
(in English) appear and disappear on the walls. It’s fleeting, confusing and utterly
transfixing and you are compelled to watch the whole thing over again. Berg’s atmospheric
score, which fuses techno with more traditional musical components, is simply
dazzling and deepens the intensity and menace of the video. One without the
other would be so much less and you can fully appreciate the significance of
Djurberg and Berg’s collaboration.
That
collaboration has been ongoing since 2004 with the two artists working closely
together to produce their installations and videos. Djurberg and Berg occupy
separate studios, but communicate throughout the lengthy developmental stage by
phone and skype, producing the artwork and music simultaneously.
Stop
motion animation is a laborious process in the best of circumstances.
Djurberg’s expansive casts of bizarre creatures and complex choreography make
hers particularly so. Clay provides a medium suitably pliable to enable
Djurberg to make whatever she imagines, but constructing and then altering the
figures repeatedly to create movement and action is extremely time consuming.
The medium plays an important aesthetic role, imbuing a sense of childlike fun
to the work and softening some of the darker elements.
Such is
the case with Worship (2016), which
focuses on our obsession with materialism. In the piece, an assortment of
figures engages with the object of their obsession in an overtly sexual way.
Djurberg has come up with an oddball assortment of these objects—a popsicle, a
fish, a corn cob—as if to say it really doesn’t matter what they are. It’s so
over the top, it’s funny. Yet, one is made slightly uncomfortable by Djurberg’s
veering so close to stereotypical images. Her no holds barred approach is an
unfettered constant throughout her work and everything—race, sex, violence, religion,
etc., is fair game. Once again, Berg’s music upholds the visuals with a
searing, thumping track. (I liked the score to One Need not be a House the
Brain Has Corridors so much, I tried Shazamming it, but no dice.)
Over 80
life-size birds comprise the extravaganza that is The Parade (2011). The birds—flamingos, pelicans, turkeys, eagles,
etc.—are simply wonderful, filling a large room with their spirited display.
Using painted fabric and clay, Djurberg has created for this installation eccentric,
yet quite accurate, versions of various species. Imbued with character, there
is something so winning about these avian specimens despite the beady eyes and
pointy beaks. Five films whose subject matter revolves around eggs are included
in the installation, but I was too caught up in the birds to pay attention to
them.
You’ve
got to love the kind of mind that comes up with a giant potato for a video
screening space. Djurberg’s The Potato
(2008) (complete with sprouts) boasts three hollowed out chambers where We Are Not Two, We Are One; Once Removed on
My Mother’s Side and It’s the Mother
are presented.
The Experiment (2008), which garnered Djurberg
and Berg a Silver Lion Award at the 2009 Venice Biennale, presents an
extravagant array of fanciful plants. The gallery space is darkened, conveying
the sense of being in some kind of primordial, otherworldly forest. Spots bathe
the flora in light, making them pop against the background and glisten
malignantly. Wandering among these flamboyant and weird creations is a little
unsettling; they’re big and intimidating. But one can’t quite shake the
impression they’re sentient with a distinctly malevolent bent. The installation
includes three videos, The Cave, The
Forest and Greed, but as with The
Parade, I couldn’t shift my attention away from Djurberg’s captivating “fleurs
du mal” to really take them in.
Social
satire, obsession and desire play out in Djurberg’s Baroque dramas. Nothing is
off limits as she explores the depths of human psychology and confronts existential
fear. Djurberg deals in the fantastical and the absurd. She presents a reality
that is so unfamiliar and illogical that it takes us back to a time when, as
wide-eyed little children, we were first getting our bearings in the world.
This experience—off-balance and alien—is what Djurberg recreates for her
audience, inspiring with her contemporary fairy tales that elemental desire for,
and fear of, that which can never be fully understood.
A tiny
taste:
https://twitter.com/lisson_gallery/status/1007274780385533956
No comments:
Post a Comment