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DiggNathalie Djurberg 2006
April 14, 2006- May 27, 2006
Reception: April 14, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Nathalie Djurberg
Zach Feuer Gallery (LFL)
530 W 24th St Nathalie Djurberg still from "Badain" (2005) |  Nathalie Djurberg still from "Badain" (2005) |  Nathalie Djurberg still from "Florentine" (2005) |
To relay the stories behind her films, Djurberg calls on a cast of plasticine puppets, that she models by hand, to lend their help. These figures become vehicles through which narratives travel. However, these narratives subtly transmogrify into intense studies of human behavior at their most crass, reflexive, complex and magnetic.
In "Dumstrut" (Dunce), the boy cowering in the corner seems to be going under an internal suffering even more painful than the cat's physical ordeal at the hands of his 'double'. Once the bear in 'Madeleine The Brave' has captured its persecutor, the bear confines it to a seemingly never-ending service of attentiveness and petting.
In 'Viola', it is a rich young girl, imprisoned within the walls of her perfect rose garden that is visited by an ape- like boy, swinging down from the trees above. Interested only in tasting her cake, the girl (and her watchful maid) mistake the boy's japing fun for a threat and an encroachment on their principles. He goes through a trial of humiliation and bullying before he successfully makes off with the sugar.
These collections of films speak of deep-rooted fears about what we don't understand and how violence and cruelty are often our reaction to these blind spots. They also explain how care can turn into dominance. They express the shallowness of our actions, but at the same time illustrate the complexity of the situations we encounter that touch and shape us individually, and on a whole as a society.
Djurberg works with the time-consuming medium of stop-motion animation. It is in these minutely composed sequences and expressions that the artist is able to set about a rhythm of emotional leverage, where she 'ping-pongs' our conceptions regarding right and wrong back and forth.
It is this ability to examine our ancient moral fears, while at the same time trampling on our modern political codes of what is acceptable, that gives Djurberg's art the force to be totally contemporary.
Nathalie Djurberg was born in Sweden in 1978. Past exhibitions include The Berlin Biennial 2006, The Tirana Biennale, Tirana, Albania, and Gio Marconi, Milan, Italy. This is her first exhibiton in New York and her first exhibition with Zach Feuer Gallery. She lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
- Andrew Cannon
Art Reviews of Nathalie Djurberg 2006
| New York Times May 19, 2006 | Roberta Smith | "The short, intensely barbed videos of Nathalie Djurberg stand out in the current Berlin Biennial and also in this, her first solo show in New York. Their medium is brightly colored, seemingly innocent stop-action claymation animation. Their main characters are girls or young women engaged in various kinds of vileness: from mild deception, friendly torture and oddly benign bestiality to murder and mayhem...." |
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show
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