Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg - Flickers of Day and Night

FLICKERS OF DAY AND NIGHT is the third exhibition in the series ARoS FOCUS // NEW NORDIC which focuses on young Nordic artists. Taking their starting point in especially Nathalie Djurberg’s (b. 1978) intensely personal fantasies and ideas, the artist couple strive to visualise the often less becoming aspects of the human psyche.

The well-known genre of "plasticine films", which many know from the children's universe of Pingu or Wallace & Gromit, is not used in a child-friendly way by Djurberg and Berg, but often develops into a bizarre, sexual and violent plot. The films have a particularly brilliant and colourful appeal, but at the same time there is something quite repulsive about them. The themes are fear, jealousy, revenge and greed, and Djurberg is responsible for the animations, while Berg is responsible for the soundtrack. Or at least that's how it was in the beginning. As the years have passed, the two artists have merged more and more, making it difficult to distinguish who does what.

Since winning the prestigious Silver Lion in Venice in 2009 with their work The Experiment, the modelling clay figures from the animations have found their way off the canvas and into the rooms. The large, shiny flowers or the fluttering birds have taken on a 3-dimensional form and found their way into actual space. Today, their works function more like large, overwhelming installations with film, neon and music in a sensory-saturated whole. The exhibition at ARoS is made possible thanks to the Obel Family Foundation and presents three large new installations on three levels. 5 in the ARoS FOCUS // NEW NORDIC gallery.

At the exhibition at ARoS, the artists present three large new installations distributed in the ARoS Vestgalleriet

The first of the three installations shown at ARoS, A Thief Caught in the Act, 2015. It is a brand new work containing six wooden tables with colourful birds caught in the beam of a powerful spotlight in the act of stealing pills. The light goes on and off in specific sequences, so that when the light is switched on, the birds are lit up as if by a police searchlight. The birds¹ expressions of fear, guilt and surprise become conspicuous, just as the colour intensity of their plumage is enhanced by the bright light.

The other installation at the exhibition is The Gates of the Festival from 2014, which was shown last year at the Lisson Gallery in London. It is a neon work mounted in the ceiling, accompanied by music and three video projections. Neon squiggles on the ceiling are blinking (if not actually dancing) to the sound and rhythm of Hans Berg¹s music. A video projection shows an animation of a big bird ”running” along the walls, followed by two wriggly animations. The animation is played in such a way that it appears to be running all over the room, round the viewer. The soft cosiness of the floor is an invitation to lie down on it, go with the flow of the music and watch the dancing neon while the bird flaps its wings and passes over you. This is your chance, like the artwork, to let go and relinquish control for a brief moment.

The last installation of the exhibition – The Clearing, 2015 -  resembles a garden packed with plants; shining oversize flowers grow up in bright Disney colours. The installation takes The Experiment, winner of the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2009, one step further. It features 162 shining flowers tall enough to hide a man on 11 rotating podiums, and placed among them are two video projections. The space has a hallucinative feeling. The dim room, the flowers emanating a Disneyish hysteria and the mystical eerie music evoke a ”granny doing acid” or a Garden of Eden gone wrong. The flowers are fine and simplified, but belong to a non-existent species, rather as if they had originally been part of a child’s  drawing, blown up and all out of proportion; the flower as a well-known figure become strange and almost scary to us – they become unheimlich.

Exhibition manager for ARoS FOCUS//NEW NORDIC: acting senior curator Lise Pennington.

Det Obelske Familiefond

Nordea Fonden

Ege

Gurli og Knud Pedersen Fonden