NATHALIE DJURBERG & HANS BERG: A JOURNEY THROUGH MUD AND CONFUSION WITH SMALL GLIMPSES OF AIR: Moderna Museet, Stockholm

The exhibition describes an inner voyage, an attempt to decipher existence in a flow of impulses and impressions. There is an element of seduction in the encounter with the works of Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg. They make us lower our guard, but then the mood intensifies, and we are torn from comfortable contemplation. These works capture extreme states – our deepest darkness and greatest euphoria.

Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg create animated worlds with objects, sound and moving images – dreamlike realities where we can lose our way. Intense chamber pieces enact fragmentary memories repressed between innocence and shame. Feverish daydreams about role play and desire, with comedy and darkness, set to hypnotic music. The films topple accepted truths about man’s supremacy in nature and our habitual perceptions of memory, time and space. Embedded in these works is a burlesque social critique that – sometimes literally – undresses the men of power, given hierarchies and social norms.