Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg: A Journey Through Mud and Confusion with Small Glimpses of Air

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

Katarzyna Kobro

I had never heard of Katarzyna Kobro (1898–1951) before seeing “Kobro & Strzemiński: New Art in Turbulent Times” at the Moderna Museet in Malmö, Sweden, which features more than 60 Kobro and Strzemiński works, augmented by others by Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Theo van Doesburg, Henryk Stażewski, Jean Hélion, Piet Mondrian and Georges Vantongerloo.

Deeply engaged with the avant-garde movements of their time; Kobro and Strzemiński were on the artistic vanguard, developing innovative ideas and producing extraordinary work, yet they remained virtually unknown until only recently.

Kobro, the more interesting artist, worked in sculpture, painting, architecture, set design and graphic design. Though her life began auspiciously—she was born into an affluent German Russian family in Moscow—hers was an existence marked by persecution, illness, war and betrayal.

As a young woman, Kobro studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and was a member of the trade union of artists from the City of Moscow which included Kazimir Malevich, Olga Rozanova, Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko. In 1920 she married Władysław Strzemiński (1893–1952). Two years later when the Soviet regime cracked down on artistic freedom, the couple fled to Poland.

The first decade in Poland was professionally rewarding for both Kobro and Strzemiński. Fresh from Moscow, a dynamic art center, they were immediately embraced by the Polish art scene and joined (in successive order) the important artists collectives, Blok, Praesens and the a.r. group, all of which drew inspiration from constructionism.

It was a heady time. Kobro gained widespread recognition when she presented her work first at the International Theater Exposition in New York and then in 1928 and 1929 when she exhibited in the two Salon for Modernists shows in Warsaw and the Autumn Salon in Paris. Following this, her sculptures were exhibited in Brussels, The Hague and Amsterdam. In 1931 Kobro and her husband published their seminal essay “Composing Space/Calculations of Space-Time Rhythms”, which examined sculptures’ relation to space throughout art history. In 1932, Kobro became a member of the Abstraction-Creation Group which brought together avant-garde artists from across Europe.

But following the birth of her daughter, Nika in 1932, Kobro’s life began to unravel. The baby was sickly and Kobro had to devote all her energy to caring for her. 

When Germany invaded Poland, Kobro, Strzemiński and their daughter fled to the East of the country. But then the Soviet Union invaded Poland, and fearing they’d be sent back to the Soviet Union if discovered, they returned to Łódź where Kobro found that many of the works she had left behind had disappeared. In the war years that followed, the family was destitute. Kobro was forced to use her wooden sculptures as firewood. In addition to the hardships, the couple was also in considerable danger as the a.r. group was looked upon as degenerate. The difficult conditions caused Kobro and Strzemiński’s relationship to fall apart.

Things did not improve when the war ended and the couple separated. Kobro was not well and her husband tried unsuccessfully to get custody of Nika. He also used his academic position to blackball Kobro so she couldn’t find work at the university. To make matters worse, Kobro was accused of "deviating from the Polish nationality", by having signed the Russian List during the German occupation. She had done so to get better food rations and to prevent her belongings from being confiscated. Sentenced to six months in prison, she was released on appeal. When Łódź’s Museum of Modern Art reopened in 1948, Kobro was not invited to the opening despite the fact that her work was in the exhibition. Around this time, she produced her final sculptures—weighty, sensual female nudes, a significant departure from the objective abstractions of the 1920s and ‘30s. Made of plaster, they are quiet, self-contained little gems with nothing extraneous added.

In 1951 at the age of 53, Kobro died. At her death and for many years thereafter she was overshadowed by her husband. With the advent of the conceptual and minimalist movements, a renewed interest developed around her work. Finally, in 1991 Kobro’s first solo exhibition was held posthumously at the Abteiberg Museum in Mönchengladbach, Germany.

Kobro relied on arithmetic and logic to create precise abstraction, determined to produce form devoid of any kind of individualism, subjectivism or expressionism. For her, sculpture was: “a laboratory experiment into methods of resolving space.” Her spatial theories were radical. In sculpture, she did not view space as separate from mass, she felt it should be invited into the composition, coexisting with it as part of the work. It made sculpture a far more expansive art form than painting, as space, which she considered part of it, is limitless.

"Sculpture is a part of space. That is why the condition for its organic character is its relation with space. Sculpture should not be a composition of form enclosed in mass, but rather an open space construction where the inside of the compositional space is connected with the outside. Rhythm is compositional unity. The energy of subsequent shapes in space produces a spatiotemporal rhythm."

Kobro’s small-scale sculptures have a presence that belies their size and such elegant restraint. Those made with thin painted sheet metal bend and undulate with a seductive fluidly. These resemble architectural fragments—two walls meeting at a corner and a doorway, or 3-D versions of passages from a painting by Mondrian or van Doesburg. In one architectural maquette, one of her sculptural forms is incorporated into a house and it fits perfectly in like a missing puzzle piece.

Although she lived through extraordinary events, the Russian Revolution and World War II, which each tainted her existence with their dual tribulations, Kobro stands as a perfect example of the struggle women face as they pursue an artistic life. She never got to experience the success that was her due, but the work remains, and it ensures she will not be forgotten.