Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg: A JOURNEY THROUGH MUD AND CONFUSION WITH SMALL GLIMPSES OF AIR: SCHIRN, Frankfurt

There is an element of seduc­tion to any encounter with the films of Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg. The inter­ac­tion of sculp­ture, sugges­tive picto­rial worlds and hypnotic music soon sucks one inescapably into the pieces. The SCHIRN is presenting the first exten­sive survey exhi­bi­tion of the duo’s work in Germany. Among the 40 or so works from the last two decades are early videos, large-format instal­la­tions and their first VR project. Nathalie Djurberg first took the lime­light with her stop-motion videos – a slow and very elab­o­rate anima­tion process in which a series of stills are edited to create the illu­sion of motion. The dolls made of Play-Doh, clay, textiles and arti­fi­cial hair are the protag­o­nists in a filmic narra­tion that has been accom­pa­nied since 2004 by music composed by Hans Berg. The Swedish artist duo works completely intu­itively each in their own medium, without a prewritten script, story­board or a prede­ter­mined dramatic plot. Djurberg and Berg take you along on a journey into the inner work­ings of human beings – with films that resemble absurd dreams and suppressed memo­ries, and with their highly atmos­pheric feel explore the limits of what is humanly toler­able.