Bukowskis | Contemporary Art & Design |Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg

Nathalie Djurberg is one of Sweden’s most internationally sought–after artists. She is continuously working on new projects together with her partner of fifteen years, musician and composer Hans Berg, who makes all the music that accompanies her pieces. The relationship between humans, animals and forces of nature is the constant, vibrant theme that occupies their shared universe. Stop-motion animations using clay figures, spatial installations and sculptures form the foundation of their work.

Worship was the first figurative video by Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg after their abstract Waterfall Variation which they made in 2014. After roughly a decade of the most diverse puppet videos, they needed to do something else for a while and went into abstraction. To have a different kind of aesthetic and to literally "cleanse their minds”.

Since Nathalie Djurberg is a storyteller by nature, she had to eventually return to figuration and her characters and puppets. After that period of abstraction, Djurberg & Berg came out with Worship, a very colourful and raunchy video reminiscent of MTV music videos from the late 90s (with a pimp whale as one of the main characters) and the complete opposite of the meditative, rather zen–like Waterfall Variation. It was wild, loud and very hip hop! The auction's sculpture Whale in Armchair was created for Djurberg and Berg’s project Worship.

The video has been shown in various exhibitions, among them the Neuer Kunstverein in Vienna, the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Mart in Rovereto and the Schirn in Frankfurt. "Worship" is also part of the Fondazione Prada's collection in Milan.

In the 2017 summer edition of ArtReview Laura Smith reviewed the exhibition Who am I to Judge, or, It Must be Something Delicious at the Lisson Gallery in London:

“… Worship (2016), the most explicit of the three works, explores the stereotypes and imagery associated with porn and sexual fetishisation. The eight-minute video presents a pageant of silicone women and men, dressed in sequins, velour or silk, who perform different erotic acts: grinding against a giant banana, squeezing a pink inflatable doughnut, twerking with a Siamese cat, writhing with a giant sequined fish or a giant sequined ice–lolly or a gold and black motorbike or an aubergine on wheels… These figures strip, touch themselves and attempt to seduce the viewer, as a dark electropop score provides them with a rhythm to which to move.

388. Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, ‘Whale in Armchair’ from ‘Worship’. Signed certificate included in lot. Executed in 2016. Unique. Fabric, epoxy resin, silicone, wood, plasticine, wire, color, filling, pearls, metal, rotating platform 42 x 50 x 50 cm. Base included in lot, 110 x 30 x 30 cm. Total height 152 cm. (d) Estimate: SEK 600 000 – 800 000 / EUR 58 890 – 78 510

Morality is missing, to varying degrees, across these works, which feel like an adventure within human nature’s most capricious and animalistic impulses. The creeping, climactic structure of the videos and the unapologetic transgressions of the exhibition’s opening tableau make us very aware of our own desires. But when coupled with the homemade style of the figures, the works manage to retain a sense of humanity. And while the characters might commit vulgar or sadistic acts, their violence is often presented alongside shame, and their cruelty coexists with the material tenderness of their making. Thereby asking us to provide a level of compassion, or even knowing complicity, to/with their actions – and thus reaffirming the very morality that is so lacking to begin with.”

Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg have been exhibited widely together in group shows, including the 53rd Venice Biennale, Italy in 2009. Their work is featured in a number of collections around the world, i.e. of Fondazione Prada, Milan; Goetz Collection, Munich; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Kunsthaus Zürich, Zürich; and Whitechapel, London, among others.

389. Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, ‘Worship’. Signed Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg. Executed in 2016. Animated film, Blue–ray HD and USB memory stick, 8:26 min. Edition 1/2 AP. Total edition 4 +2 AP. Original box 24 x 17 x 4.5 cm. Signed certificate included in lot. (d) Estimate: SEK 150 000 – 200 000 / EUR 14 720 – 19 630